by Andre Sanchez

If you study a profile of the Panama Canal you will be surprised and astounded at what little you knew about it.  When a ship sails through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic Ocean to the east to the Pacific Ocean to the west, it actually exits the canal 27 miles east of where it entered!  I bet that surprises you! I bet you thought it went from east to west. Well it doesn’t.  From the Atlantic side the Panama Canal travels from Northwest to Southeast due to the orientation of the Panama isthmus. Look at a map and that will explain it to you. 

The Panama Canal was necessary since before it was constructed, a ship would have to travel south round Cape Horn and back up the side of South America.  That is a distance of 13,000 miles. A trip from New York to San Francisco was shortened to about 5,200 miles.  Still a long way, but 13,000 miles …? 

If we look at a profile of the canal, it has three lock systems. Some shorter canals have many locks, but they are inland canals negotiating significant height differences. Theoretically, there should be no height distances traveling from one ocean to another since the water level should be just that:  level. However, the Panama Canal was built through a lake in order to cut the engineering work to a minimum.   

A ship entering the Panama Canal from the Atlantic side does so through Lemon bay which takes it through mangroves for about six miles then on until it reaches Gatun Lake. When created especially for the canal, the Gatun Lake at 164 square miles was the largest artificial, lake in the world when it was created by damming the Chagres River.  

Gatun Lake is the first of the three locks, called the Gatun locks. Over a length of 1.2 miles they raise your boat up to the level of the Gatun Lake.  After 15 miles, you will run into the Chagres River, which has been deepened and widened by the Gatun dam and you pass under the Centennial Bridge.   

You then cross the Continental Divide using the Gaillard Cut that leads you to the Pedro Miguel Lock that drops you 31 feet to the artificial Milaflores Lake. After just over a mile or so, you reach the Milaflores Lock system. This is over a mile long that lifts you average of 55 feet, depending on the tide, since after you pass through it you are once more at sea level.  

You then travel another eight and a quarter miles to reach the Pacific Ocean.  The Panama Canal is truly a wonder of engineering science, and in a way it is more impressive than the longer Suez Canal. That is always at sea level with no locks to negotiate.  In total the Panama Canal consists of seventeen artificial lakes and a number of locks operated through three lock systems. Although it has been extremely successful, it is now constantly under threat from a lack of water due to deforestation.  The trees that regularly sent a supply of water to the lakes have been depleted so much that the lakes have now to be continually dredged to keep the waterway open. 

Every time a large ship passes through the canal, 53 million gallons of water pass from the lake to the sea. This use to be provided by the rainy season to the rainforests that would regulate its supply to the lakes. However, with the demise of the rainforests the rainfall just runs off immediately to the lakes and creates excessive supply in some months, and insufficient in others. There is little that can now be done. 

However, the canal is energy efficient.  A hydro-electric plant at the Gatun Dam provides most of the energy required to maintain it. As a constant flow of water runoff reduces, more power might be required in the future to pump water from one ocean to the other via the lakes in order to power the lock systems.  This remains to be seen. 

Irrespective of any current problems, real or perceived, the canal remains a feat of engineering achievement, and careful examination of the profile of the Panama Canal indicates just what man can do to overcome the barriers of nature. 

A Profile of the Panama Canal was originally published at http://www.globallifenow.com