Time Capsule

Time Capsule

In 2006, while staying at Havana's Hotel Nacional, I met an interesting man named Dr. David Guggenheim. David is a marine researcher. He studies marine life including corals in the seas around Cuba as part of his duties as the Director of The Cuban Marine Research and Conservation Program of The Ocean Foundation.

David and I had a few conversations about his work in Cuba, and his insights helped shape my ideas on the unique opportunity Cuba has to make a real contribution to marine science in particular and to natural conservation in general.

David pointed out Cuba is like a time capsule sealed away inside of the cornerstone of an old building. Time capsules contain little bits of our lives at the time the building construction begins. Presumably, in 50 or 100 years, when the capsule is opened future people can see tangible tokens of the way life was way back when.

David's comments were aimed at explaining the state of the natural environment of Cuba and the seas around it. For 50 years or more, Cuba has been somewhat sealed off from the rest of the world in many ways. In particular, much of the rest of the world has spent the last 50+ years in a hell-bent race for development and industrialization, but not Cuba, where much of the environment is like it was in 1959.

You could say that now Cuba is coming into the modern world. Modern hotels are springing up on the beaches, and even this week we heard of a huge Spanish oil rig beginning to drill in the Florida Straits just 70 miles from Key West. But David points out tht much of Cuba's natural treasures are still there to be seen. Protecting them should be an obligation for Cuba and for nature lovers everywhere.

Actually, within the Cuban government is an appreciation and willingness to protect the country's natural treasures. David himself told me how difficult it is for him to ger licenses and permission to enter vast protected undersea locations. He also talked about how there are many natural preserves like the Zapata swamp and Cayo Coco and Las Terrazas, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. But, there remain many more valuable natural areas which could become natural preserves. Now is the time to act while the land values are low and development has not ruined them.

I recently saw a one hour TV show on David's work showing some of Cuba's natural wonders including a rare type of coral that still grows in no other part of the world. The show just renewed my hopes that this natural time capsule—a place with little development during a period of 50 years of helter-skelter development in the rest of the world—will somehow be saved. At least we have some hope that it can happen.

The plants and animals of Cuba are so precious, and the island has a staggering variety from Cuban Crocodiles to Ebony trees. Wouldn't it be great to be able to visit them alive in their natural settings?

Les Inglis