Can Cuba’s Mysteries Help Save the World’s Coral Reefs?
Until that tranquil morning in late June 1974, the sum total of my SCUBA diving experience had been in a landlocked state, in a stifling, moldy indoor YMCA pool in the Philadelphia suburbs and a Pennsylvania quarry, flooded with icy soup-green water. Barely comprehending the new world of pungent humidity, mountainous afternoon cumulus clouds, and lush tangles of flowering succulents I experienced at water’s edge during my first visit to the Florida Keys, I was wholly unprepared later that morning when I found myself seated in sugar-white sand with 40 feet of warm, clear aquamarine water above my head. As impossibly multi-colored fish passed slowly within reach before my wide 15-year-old eyes, my gaze broadened as I marveled at the towering jetties of coral around us, living layer cakes of corals upon corals, brown and mustard rock-like structures, encrusted with brilliant red, violet and orange coralline fans and branches, swaying in the warm, nourishing current and, like eager spring blossoms, reaching toward the dancing sunlight scattered on the surface above. Read more
If you know the 
This week marks a year since I began the OceanDoctor blog. I’ve spent the time experimenting with many new and evolving forms of communication — blogging, Podcasts, Twitter, etc. — trying to find better ways to share my watery experiences, and the response has been wonderful and inspiring. I’m hoping to do much more in the year ahead and have decided to move my blog to this, a self-hosted platform at OceanDoctor.org, which provides more flexibility to experiment with new, leading edge tools and better integrates with the 
