You’ve seen it in the faces of infants when they recognize their mother’s smiling face above. You’ve seen it on the face of an old friend across the room when she suddenly recognizes you…after all those years. And Doug Shulz, producer at Partisan Pictures, saw it clearly on my face, when he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward an old friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 35 years.

When we humans recognize a friend, our faces convey it with a distinctive widening of the eyes. Combine that with the surprise of seeing someone we aren’t expecting to see, our eyes grow even wider, often accompanied by a cartoon-like jaw drop. Judging from Doug’s expression while observing my face, I can only imagine how wide my eyes were. Since we were 20 feet beneath Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, it must have been difficult for him to discern between an expression of surprise and delight versus a textbook example of wide-eyed diver panic. My eyes were transfixed on my old friend with a funny name whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since I was a teenager. Larger than life, vibrant, and embracing the sun, my friend was very much alive and healthy, clearly enjoying the good life in Cuba.

Underwater cinematographer, Shane Moore films an enormous stand of healthy Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) near Cayo Levisa, Cuba

At times I had doubted I would ever see Acropora palmata again — known to most as Elkhorn coral — but here it stood as dramatically and triumphantly as it had a generation ago, before most of its kind vanished from the Caribbean. Acropora has been described as the “poster child” for decline in the Caribbean, decimated by bleaching, white band disease, hurricanes, and other factors. Recent scientific papers, pointing to the nearly 95 percent loss of this genus in areas like the Florida Keys, have pointed out that such a grave loss has seriously altered “the fundamental dynamics of shallow-water community structure.” So emblematic is Elkhorn coral to the healthy coral reef, and so heart-wrenching has been its loss, that, while Vice President of Ocean Conservancy, I lobbied hard — and won — to have its image included in the organization’s redesigned logo. You can’t miss it, at the bottom, to the left of the humpback whale.

Healthy brain corals were abundant near Cayo Levisa, Cuba

I knew from data and photos taken by colleagues that such corals flourished in Cuba. And on previous expeditions, I had even glimpsed small patches of Acropora, clinging to reef crests, standing tall before the breaking turquoise waves. But in my wide-eyed encounter, I was breathless. I beheld not just a small patch of healthy coral. I saw stand after stand — a forest of glorious, healthy mustard-brown Acropora, as far as my eyes could see in the fading afternoon sun in the blue-green beneath the waves. Doug, along with renowned cinematographer Shane Moore, had found it before me and were already capturing frame after frame of video for the PBS series, “Nature,” an episode on Cuba scheduled to air sometime in 2010. But all I could do was sit and stare…and occasionally breathe.

Denuded mangroves evidence the power of 2008's Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which passed through here within a week of one another

Producer Doug Shulz of Partisan Pictures (L) and Underwater Cinematographer Shane Moore (R) on location filming for the PBS series, "Nature"

What made this sight even more incredible is what we had just seen above the surface. Nearly a year ago to the day, not one but two major hurricanes — Gustav and Ike — converged on this area within a week of one another, causing tremendous damage. The storms tore millions of leaves from the islands’ protective mangroves, leaving a tangled fringe of rotting, brown branches along the coastline. What were formerly aids to navigation are now, as Shane pointed out, hazards to navigation, bare wooden posts protruding from the channel, stripped by the winds of their painted markers and lighted beacons. And there was damage underwater, too. The storms toppled dozens of corals, especially Acropora, which lay on their sides or broken into small piles of coral rubble. Some of them were massive, surely many decades old. But even among such wreckage there was cause for joy. Already the Acropora were growing back, and rapidly so. Many of the dark-brown, algae-covered dead branches were tipped with bright, mustard and white extensions several inches long, healthy, young coral exhibiting a quality that conservation biologists long to see in organisms like corals: Resilience. The ability of species to rebound from untold stress, to endure while others perish, we look for areas in the world where corals are resilient. Sadly, despite our efforts, the situation for corals will likely get worse before it gets better. Finding and protecting resilient areas is akin to emergency room triage — protecting those areas with the best chance of survival that may, in turn, help neighboring and downstream areas to recover when conditions eventually improve.

So why Cuba? Why do corals here flourish while just 90 miles to the north in the Florida Keys, and points east throughout the Caribbean, corals lie dead and dying? There are theories, which I’ve covered in an earlier post, “Can Cuba’s Mysteries Help Save the World’s Coral Reefs?” Decyphering this mystery is central among the goals of our ongoing collaborative research efforts with the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (Centro de Investigaciones Marinas), where nearly 20 graduate students are using this research as the basis of their Master’s theses and doctoral dissertations.

A lobster fisherman near Cayo Paraíso (Paradise Key), so-named by Ernest Hemingway

It’s also a top priority identified by a unique tri-national (Cuba, Mexico, USA) effort I’m helping to lead to elevate international collaboration in marine science and conservation to a new level. (See related articles at 1planet1ocean and the New York Times.)

As we rested aboard our boat between dives, a lobster fisherman paddled into view in a tiny pneumatico rowboat buoyed by rubber inner tubes. Gliding upon the warm emerald waters against the backdrop of a small, tranquil key, beneath the dramatic mogotes of Pinar del Río province along the mainland, it seemed a scene conjured up by the pen of Ernest Hemingway. As if reading my mind, our captain and guide, Rolando, pointed toward the key and identified it as Cayo Paraíso, Paradise Key, so-named by Ernest Hemingway himself. It’s not the official name of the tiny island, but the locals and the nautical charts all refer to it as Cayo Paraíso. Rolando reminisces about camping on the island with his father. The hurricanes of the past year have washed away nearly half of the island, and I detect a bit of sadness on Rolando’s face. But at the same time I can’t help but think about the paraíso I had just seen beneath our feet. It might be one of a handful of places in the Caribbean that still looks as it did when Hemingway plied these waters. I imagine him returning, wide-eyed, to greet his old friends.

The research vessel will depart from Havana in early- to mid-August for a planned 20-day expedition. Look for an expedition tracking page that will allow you to keep tabs on the expedition’s progress.

Last week, results from the first two expeditions were presented at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Unfortunately, out of five invited Cuban researchers, only one was granted a visa to attend the conference.

Even in those first minutes face-to-face with a coral reef, the enormity of what I was witnessing was clear to me. I remember thinking, “There’s a whole living world going on down here, and we don’t know anything about it.” While I may have suspected in those moments that I would dedicate my career to something having to do with the oceans, I never would have dreamed that more than three decades later I would be literally immersed in some of the most important work of my life just 90 miles to the south of where I was seated beneath the waves.

Last week, as I departed Ft. Lauderdale and the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium, the world’s largest coral summit held every four years, the news was sobering. One-third of the world’s corals are well on their way to outright extinction, and the rest are threatened with, among other things, the indignant end of simply dissolving away, as increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions enters the oceans, raising their acidity to the point where any ocean creature with a calcium carbonate shell — from corals to clams — succumbs to the acid waters. When my daughter was 15 and floated above that same reef I had experienced, it had become a pale shadow of the miracle of nature I had so delighted in. Nearly half the corals in the Florida Keys have died in my lifetime. Some are bleached bone white, others shackled in diseased bands of black. Many more lie smothered in broad blankets of algal slime which have robbed the reef of its rainbow of colors, leaving a lifeless green-gray skeleton where countless diversity once eeked from every imaginable crack and crevice. As I beheld this tragic image, little did I imagine that important clues to saving this reef and many more like it around the Caribbean and the world, might lie just 90 miles to the south.

I now sort through assorted dive gear, video equipment, and sunscreen preparing for my 37th visit to that magical place 90 miles to the south, to an island larger than all the other Caribbean islands combined, to an island whose coat of arms bears a key — “llave del golfo“, the key to the Gulf of Mexico — a subtropical nexus where the waters of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean intertwine in a sublime undersea cocktail of diversity, color and mystery. Our fourth joint expedition of Proyecto Costa Noroccidental (Project of the Northwest Coast) — a project of the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (Centro de Investigaciones Marinas: CIM) and the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi — will continue our ongoing project to explore the most unknown corner of the Gulf of Mexico: Cuba’s northwest coastal waters.

A green sea turtle hatchling at Cuba's westernmost point, Guanahacabibes

It is often said that those 90 miles of open water south of the Florida Keys — the Straits of Florida — separate Cuba and the USA. Like a hand-drawn blue borderline, the Straits are often invoked as a symbol of the 50-year-old Cold War that has frozen our two countries so tantalizingly close, yet so tragically far apart. But to the sea turtles, sharks, lobster, whales and other sea life, those same 90 miles of blue unite our countries with racing blue currents, unseen underwater pathways, and a web of colorful life that defies the perceptions of so many of the Gulf of Mexico, who know it only as a hot, muddy cauldron that spawns hurricanes and oil platforms. Cuba, Mexico and the U.S. share the Gulf of Mexico and have a responsibility to work together to understand and protect it. Thankfully, despite debilitating restrictions, which are ever-changing in the cool winds of Cold War politics, we have worked for a solid eight years now with our Cuban colleagues, advancing our understanding of the Gulf of Mexico and providing research opportunities for Cuba’s next generation of marine scientists — nearly 20 have based their Masters and Ph.D. research on our joint projects.

Cuba's next generation of marine scientists participate in & learn from the project

Cuba’s northwest coast – the verdant Pinar del Rí­o province, home to Cuba’s legendary cigars — is the least-developed coastal region of Cuba. But as Cuba’s tourism trade continues to develop and as Cuba’s fledgling offshore oil development expands into the Gulf, we hope that the insights from our joint research help to guide the hand of such development so that some of Cuba’s most precious assets, its coral reefs, will be spared the all too common fate I’ve seen elsewhere in the Caribbean. And there is much at stake. As we dove during the second expedition, it was as if we had been transported decades backward in time, to the healthy, vibrant, towering reefs I remember from my mid-teens. The reefs I have seen in the Archepélago de Los Colorados, the barrier reef that runs along Cuba’s northwest coast, are the healthiest I have seen in my life. For that reason, and because of its unique history and geography, Cuba may hold important clues for coral reefs elsewhere in the Caribbean and perhaps around the world.

Good friend and colleague, Dr. Gaspar González-Sansón, titular professor at University of Havana, CIM, and co-principal investigator of Proyecto Costa Noroccidental, recently pointed to a number of possible reasons for the health of Cuba’s reefs when we spoke when I was recently in Havana:

• Cuba’s tourism industry did not begin until 1993, necessitated by the demise of the Soviet Union and its aid to the island. Though tourism has proceeded at a rapid pace, it is highly localized at specific resort areas on the coasts.
• The healthiest reefs also happen to be far from shore, such as Los Colorados to the north and Jardines de la Reina to the south, perhaps beyond the reach of harmful concentrations of coastal pollution.
• Cuba does have a commercial fishing fleet, but fishermen principally use hook and line, so unlike nets and trawls which result in catching just about everything, fishing in Cuba is highly selective. In contrast, more than 80 percent of what’s caught in U.S. Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawls is not shrimp — it’s small finfish and other creatures collectively known as “bycatch” that represent the unforgivable waste of this fishing practice. Cuba is now phasing out all bottom trawling on its continental shelf.
  

  Cuban commercial fishing vessel in the Gulf of Mexico

• In the early days of the revolution, President Fidel Castro declared, “Not one drop of water to the sea,” a call to action to dam rivers and streams in order to divert water for use in agriculture and population centers. Reducing fresh water input upset the delicate balance of fresh and salt water in Cuba’s estuaries, resulting in the disappearance of populations intolerant to the saltier waters, such as the white shrimp. In another way, however, this policy may have inadvertently served to help reefs by reducing the transport of fertilizers and pesticides to the reefs.
• Use of fertilizers and pesticides has dropped dramatically since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. Given that nutrient pollution is a key factor in the growth of coral-smothering algae, this may also be an important factor.

Sunset on Cuba's Gulf of Mexico

In countless ways, the island of Cuba is unique. And when it comes to coral reefs, Cuba is again, unique. Here an island of thriving corals flourishes amid a world of corals dying and disappearing. In this mysterious corner of the Gulf of Mexico where time seems to have stopped, I find hope. Hope that the rich ecosystems of this beautiful island will endure. And I find hope that Cuba’s coral reefs might share some of their tantalizing secrets, secrets that can offer clues to protecting and restoring coral reefs elsewhere, including a special place I still remember in the Florida Keys, just 90 miles to the north.

The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (CIM) [Centro de Investigaciones Marinas] are leading a collaborative effort, Proyecto Costa Noroccidental [Project of the Northwest Coast], a comprehensive multi-year research and conservation program for Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico coast. Dr. David E. Guggenheim, president of 1planet1ocean, is a member of HRI’s Advisory Council and also serves as HRI’s Cuba Programs Manager and is co-principal investigator of the project with Dr. Gaspar González Sansón of CIM.

Proyecto Costa Noroccidental is assessing northwestern Cuba’s marine habitats, identifying and describing the principal human uses and threats, providing recommendations for the conservation of the region’s ecosystems, and establishing a framework for long-term cooperative research and monitoring. The project is designed to provide fundamental data on this understudied region of Cuba while also providing new insights regarding biological connectivity and conservation in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. The project is expected to help secure science-based conservation policies in advance of the inevitable wave of development in the region.

Proyecto Costa Noroccidental is the first comprehensive study of Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico region

Cuba’s northwest coast has not been comprehensively studied, and the results of this project are providing an important advance to the natural sciences in Cuba and conservation of costal ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. This research is gaining attention and participation from numerous Cuban institutions and is providing the basis for the research theses and dissertations for 16 students at the project’s lead Cuban institution, the University of Havana’s Centro de Investigaciones Marinas (CIM) [Center for Marine Research], the only Cuban institution where marine scientists are trained. Our understanding of the Gulf increasingly points toward a vast web of linkages throughout the ecosystem, linkages that span international borders. Collaborative scientific research is a permitted activity under the long-standing United States’ economic embargo of Cuba.

CIM researcher prepares samples for reference collection during second expedition

Up until now, Cuba’s northwest coast has not experienced the levels of coastal development seen elsewhere on the island, but as the country is now among the world’s fastest growing tourist destinations, there are growing pressures of tourism in the region, accompanied by accelerating impacts from fishing, agriculture, and now, offshore petroleum development.

The project is collecting data on corals and invertebrates, fish populations, and water quality. Ecotoxicological analysis is also being conducted to assess land-based pollution impacts. In 2007, a shark research component will be incorporated, including a planned October 2007 shark tagging expedition. Northwest Cuba has seen a ten-fold reduction in shark landings since the 1960s.

CIM researcher measures green sea turtle nesting at Guanahacabibes, Cuba

The project also includes a comprehensive sea turtle research and conservation component focused at Cuba’s westernmost point, Guanahacabibes. Through strong community involvement and education, it has dramatically reduced turtle poaching.

In 2007, in collaboration with several Mexican institutions, the project will include a genetic analysis of Cuban sea turtle populations in order to gain new insight into population dynamics. Also planned for 2007 is a broadening dialogue with Cuban policymakers to make use of the data obtained from this project.

At the December 2006 MARCuba conference in Havana (Cuba’s triennial marine research conference) a total of 22 presented papers and posters were based on the research outcomes of this project. Publication efforts will continue and intensify over the coming year.