Isla San Telmo

Isla San Telmo is a small island measuring in area. The island is located on the triangle shaped Bay of Panama, facing the Pacific Ocean to its west. The smallest of the many volcanic islands in the Archipelago de las Perlas to the southeast of the main island, it is heavily forested and was once a coastal valley. The bay is full of marine fauna with molluscs and fish. Rio Cacique is approximately to the northwest. There is a reef measuring between Isla San Telmo and Isla del Rey. Isla Galera is approximately nautical miles to the southeast. ==History==

Isla San Telmo is named after St. Elmo, also called Saint Erasmus, who was a 4th-century martyr; he is the patron saint of mariners. Spanish marine charts show this island in their maps. Indigenous people lived in the forested area near the shores till the arrival of Spaniards. Shell fish, found in profusion in these islands, were named "Perlas" by the Europeans. Following overexploitation, the original settlers left, and only the black descendants of slaves inhabit the islands in the present day, engaged in subsistence farming and fishing. ==Submarine wreck==

wreck in the Panama Canal The wreck of a submarine can be seen off the beach during low tide. The Japanese had examined this submarine and stated that it did not belong to them. However, a subsequent underwater study by German divers reported that it belonged to the Japanese, having wrecked when the Japanese intended to destroy the strategically important Panama Canal in 1942. It was conjectured that the submarine was abandoned by its crew due to technical problems and the crew had taken refuge on the island. Subsequently, Jim Delgado of the Vancouver Maritime Museum investigated the wreck. A local fisherman told Delgado about the wreck that he had observed during the low tide, a rusted and weed covered metal body off the coast of St. Thelmo. Delgado saw this wreck sitting on the coastline of St. Thelmo, but did not believe the fisherman's conjecture that the wreck was of a Japanese submarine that operated in the Panama Canal during World War II. He explored the wreck, recorded its dimensions, but could not link it to any known vessels as it resembled more of a science fantasy vessel. After five years, it was identified as the "Sub Marine Explorer", an underwater craft designed by Julius H. Kroehl, a German engineer who also reportedly died because of this vessel, that was one of the world's first submarines. ==References==