Marine conservation in Cuba.

After my last post, a good friend of mine, also an avid scuba diver, asked me how the Cuban government had been able to maintain such pristine reefs throughout all these years. He pointed out that they would have had to start their conservation efforts a long time ago to achieve the results they have today.

It's an interesting question, and my friend is right. They did begin their marine conservation efforts years ago. I've been doing some research (rather limited, I'll admit) on how the reefs in Cuba have come to be the way they are, and what is keeping the levels of biodiversity so high in those regions. It's undeniable that, from a scientific standpoint, they are doing something right. And from what I've been reading, the U.S. has a lot to gain from ensuring that those reefs stay healthy.

I just found an interesting blog about marine conservation in Cuba on the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) website. EDF is a US based organization whose aim is to preserve earth's natural systems. They focus on a wide range of topics like climate change, clean air, oceans, etc. They even have an entire team dedicated to working with Mexican and Cuban scientists, so as to collaborate on the work of protecting the bodies of water which affect all three nations - the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits, and so on. They're all critically connected, ecologically speaking.

Anyway, the director of EDF's Cuba program, Daniel Whittle, posted a blog entry on small fishing communities along the southern coast of Cuba. He talks about marine protected areas (MPAs), regional fisheries management, and community-based, sustainable fisheries. It's worth a read, especially for marine ecologists and biologists.

On a side note: I totally did not realize that the Gardens of the Queens national park in Cuba was the largest marine park in the Caribbean. Right now, there is even an initiative to expand it. That's a pretty big deal.

Life's a beach.

Day two of our Cayo Coco trip consisted of beach-going, scuba diving, and reliving my marine biology days.

In the morning, a group of us ventured out to a dive shop at another hotel in Cayo Coco, hopped in a little speed boat with a couple of their SCUBA instructors to lead the way, and dropped down for a wreck dive just off the shore. I won't bore you with another picture of the stunning shoreline of Cuba (haha, just kidding, yes I will!).

The lobby of the other hotel, where the dive shop was.

A wall map of Cayo Coco and some of its dive sites.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of our boat trip out to the dive site (didn't want to risk dropping the camera in the water!), or any underwater pictures from our dive, but this was our boat. The tide was in, and the waves were high. And really fun.

Big waves!

We boated out to the dive site about ten minutes away, and dropped down for a quick, but fun, wreck dive. The wreck was an intentionally-sunk fishing boat, which was intended to create an artificial reef where there isn't one.  So far, it's not a very developed reef, but there are a few regular fish inhabitants, and the beginnings of a few species of coral. These kinds of artifical reefs take years to grow, but I must say, it is very forward thinking for the Cuban marine conservation groups to initiate projects like this.

I managed to find a picture of our wreck dive site from the Cayo Coco dive center website!

The fishing boat at the bottom of the sea.

You can see the early formations of coral on the outside of the boat, and the different species of fish it attracts. That, my friends, is how you build a reef. Being the geek that I am, I find it refreshing to see that governments are taking an active role in protecting their oceans and marine ecosystems, which are more important than most people think. (Once a biologist, always a biologist.) Maybe one day I'll get to go back to that dive site and see how much it's grown.

Anyway, after our little SCUBA diving excursion, a group of us drove out a little ways to another beach, Playa Pilar, which, as I mentioned in one of my first posts, is probably the nicest beach I've ever seen.

The drive out to Playa Pilar from the back of a pickup.

Playa Pilar.

This is just a boring picture of a mangrove swamp...

...UNTIL YOU ZOOM IN.

There were some nice views along the way. Mangrove swamps GALORE. When I was in fourth grade, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I did a research project on mangrove swamps. There was so little information in our library about them (this was before the internet came to town...) that I had a hard time writing about that particular ecosystem. To see miles of untouched mangrove swamps in Cayo Coco, Cuba was pretty incredible. The only other time I can remember seeing mangroves that extensive was when I was off of a remote island in Indonesia. And there were no flamingos in Indonesia, I might add.

The biologist in me was geeking out all day.

Ahh, Cuba.