Marine Studies Show Potential for U.S.-Cuban Collaboration

摘要

Dense mangroves eclipse the midday sun in this inlet off northern Cuba's La Redonda Lake, as a team of six ecologists steps off an idling speedboat. They are here to gather baseline data on the mangrove ecosystem and focus on a local mystery—the disappearance of the large-mouth black bass {Micropterus salmoides). Once prolific, it has been vanishing from this mangrove lake over the past few years. Elevated water temperature or other climatic factors are possible causes, but the team says nothing has been ruled out.Adan Zuniga Rios, leader of the project, wonders whether something similar has happened in South Florida, more than 150 kilometers away, home to almost identical mangrove thickets. "Ecosystems know no country borders," says Rios, director of the Center for Coastal Ecosystems Research (CIEC), based in this coastal town. Yet Zuniga has been unable to work with U.S. scientists to gather parallel data in Florida."If we were dealing with any other two countries," collaboration wouldn't be so difficult, he says. But this is Cuba, and for 51 years the U.S. economic embargo has made interactions cumbersome, if not impossible. But change may be coming. Early this year, Cuba eliminated the "white card," a type of exit visa required of anyone who wants to travel abroad.