Reggae Roots
Native Culture & Amigos, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, ¢3,000 ($6).

9th Latin American Congress of Bilingual Education for Deaf People
Through Jan. 24, UCR Law School Auditorium, San Pedro, www.congresosordos.ucr.ac.cr.

Workshop on Renewable Energy for the Developing World
Through Jan. 27, Rancho Mastatal, Puriscal, www.ranchomastatal.com.

By Hannah Thompson
Special to The Tico Times | editorial@ticotimes.net

Renate Herberger is determined to raise awareness of the harm being done to the endangered creatures of the oceans. To make her point, she's preparing to swim the entire Costa Rican Pacific coast – more than 1,000 kilometers.

Herberger, 52, a German living in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, will begin her extraordinary challenge Feb. 1 at Punta Burica on the border with Panama. She will swim eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than two months, she says, until she reaches her destination at Bahía Salinas on the Nicaraguan border.

“My project is about promoting gentler practices out at sea,” Herberger told The Tico Times. “So much life is lost through unsustainable and wasteful commercial fishing practices, such as shark-finning, long-lining, trawling and drag-netting.”

Herberger is garnering support – funds and places to dry off and rest along the way – through her Web site www.costaricamermaid.net.

Read next Friday's print edition of The Tico Times for more on this story.

In the Costa Rican capital of San José, police raided what they said were known hang-outs for street thugs and criminals, rounding up at least 245 suspects last week, a statement from the Public Security Ministry said Friday.

The sweeping raids – combined efforts by migration officers and agents from the Transit Police and the Judicial Investigation Police – resulted in 69 arrests in the neighborhood of La Tabla de Desamparados, 85 in San Sebastián and 90 in the so-called “Tierras Dominicanas,” the police statement said.

Two vehicles were also impounded.

In San Sebastián, officers dismantled a toll system that, according to police, crime rings had set up to extort money from anyone passing through and to deter police from entering.

The arrests come a week after an unnerving report in the daily La Nación that cited 600 repeat criminal offenders at large in and around the Costa Rican capital.

-Tico Times

Five armed men broke into a zoo in Managua, Nicaragua, Friday and stole 15 endangered birds and a raccoon.

Police are investigating the robbery of the raccoon, five bi-colored toucans, nine parrots and a macaw kept in the zoo's rescue center, zoo director Marina Argüello told U.S. newswire The Associated Press.

The thieves managed to get past a security guard in the rear of the zoo and headed straight for the rescue center, she said.

The toucans had been prepared for mating, she added.

The loss was “incalculable,” said Argüello, but the birds can gross up to $1,000 each in the underground market.