From NPR Dec 9

By Nick Miroff

Cuba has some the most extensive coral reefs in the hemisphere, but political strains between Washington and Havana largely have kept American scientists away.

A new partnership for marine research is trying to change that at one of Cuba’s most remote places, far from people and pollution.

Off central Cuba’s southern coast, hundreds of tiny islands stretch into the Caribbean. They are ringed with narrow beaches and thick stands of red mangrove.

When Christopher Columbus arrived here, he named the area Los Jardines de la Reina — The Queen’s Gardens. Five centuries later, there isn’t a single town or road or permanent human presence.

The underwater gardens of pristine coral are still here. The Cuban government banned fishing over a 386-square-mile section of the islands in 1997, creating what scientists say is the Caribbean’s largest marine reserve.

Only a few hundred divers visit each year. Dropping below the surface into underwater canyons of black coral and giant sea fans, U.S. scientist David Guggenheim of The Ocean Foundation encountered species he had only seen in photographs, like the nearly extinct Nassau grouper.

He looked stunned after he came up from his first dive in the islands and took off his mask.

“It’s amazing. It’s sort of like ‘Jurassic Park.’ Scientists are seeing these species they never expected to see in their life, because they’re extinct. Well, these fish aren’t extinct, but they might as well be for most of us. So I feel very lucky to see them,” he says.

Guggenheim came to the area on a converted lobster boat with a Cuban marine biologist and two U.S. colleagues.

For him and other scientists, the area is like a large-scale experiment — a look back in time at a marine environment largely unaffected by fishermen, pollution and coral-killing fertilizer runoff. The waters are plentiful with huge fish, sharks, sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles.

As these species flourish, some will leave the reserve, helping repopulate other areas where their numbers are depleted.

“Fish are not just crops that grow in the sea for us to harvest — it doesn’t work that way. Fish have important jobs to do, and when we remove them in numbers, they can’t do those jobs. And we’ve seen time and time again that ecosystems collapse, especially coral reef ecosystems, when we upset that balance,” he says.

One obvious sign of a healthy balance in Los Jardines is the sharks. Elsewhere in the region, their numbers have declined 90 percent or more. But in these royal blue waters, they’re everywhere.

“To even see a shark in some places is a big deal these days, and to come to this area and dive with dozens of sharks is truly something special,” says nature photographer Kip Evans.