University of Miami Special Report: Cuba and the Caribbean

Cuba & The Caribbean Special Report

  • The Environment
    • A Museum of Marine Life
    • Exploring Energy Options for Cuba
    • Working Together to Build a Sustainable Future
    • Influencing Hurricane Intensity
    • Finding Keys to Coral Survival
    • A Pregnancy Exam for Jaws
    • Protecting Flora, Fauna, and Humans in the Caribbean Biological Corridor
    • Father of Dust
    • Science as Diplomacy
  • The People
    • A Conversation with Yoani Sánchez
    • – Conversando con Yoani Sánchez
    • A Unique Cultural Perspective
    • – Una Perspectiva Cultural Única
    • Unearthing the Mysteries of the Caribbean
    • El Mar y Él
    • Helping Hands in Haiti
    • Tracing Circuitous Lines of the Black LGBTQ Experience
    • Student Organizations Embrace Caribbean Culture
    • A Winning Team
    • Exploring Shipwrecks in the Caribbean
    • Language and the Negotiation of Identities
    • Cuban Lecturer Inspires Students through Stories of Resilience
    • Chinese Influences on Life and Religion in Cuba
    • A Chinese-Cuban Secret Society in Havana
  • Business & Economy
    • Restoring Cuba’s Historic Infrastructure
    • Serving the Underserved in Dominican Republic
    • A Bright Future for Caribbean Fish
    • A Close Look at Cuba’s Health Care System
    • Studying Caribbean Currency
    • Haiti After Hurricane Matthew
  • Health Care
    • Sharing Ideas Amid a Changing Culture
    • Cuba Water Hassles
    • Sharing Insights On Trauma Care
    • Delaying Motherhood for Childhood
    • There’s Something in the Waters of Puerto Rico’s Guánica Bay
    • Health Care in Haiti
    • Missions of Mercy
    • Transforming Nursing Education in Guyana
    • Creative Insight on Cuba’s Wastewater System
    • A ‘Living Laboratory’ for Studying Multiple Sclerosis
    • A Hemispheric Approach to Bioethics and Health Policy
    • Campeche and UM Join Hands to Improve Public Health
    • Comparative Studies Could Identify IBD ‘Triggers’
    • A Close Look at Cervical Cancer in Haitian Women
  • Politics & Policy
    • A Renewed, Tenuous Relationship
    • A Trusted Ally for Leftists
    • GTMO: Mayberry with a Caribbean Breeze
    • On the Frontlines of Immigration
    • Marrying Science and Policy in The Bahamas
  • Arts & Culture
    • A UM Architect’s Connection to Cuba
    • Digital Home for Cuban Theater
    • Football Flashback: ‘Canes vs. Cuba
    • An Interdisciplinary Hemispheric Collaboration
    • Exploring Architectural Wonders
    • Sanctuaries Reveal ‘Otherworldly’ Past
    • Unexpected Reception
    • Connections to the Past
    • Havana: The ‘Rome of the New World’
    • The Lowe Features Caribbean Art
    • A Musician Grows in Cuba
    • Afro-Cuban Religion: Surviving and Thriving Underground
    • The Musical Divide of Charismatic Worship in Haiti
    • Impresiones: Sights and Sounds from Travels in Cuba
    • The Fruits of Caribbean Literary Studies
    • Jazz Cubano!
  • Centers & Institutes
    • ICCAS: A Hub for Information on Cuba at the University of Miami
    • Abess Center: Saving Coral Reefs
    • CCS: Hemispheric Collaboration
    • – CCS: Colaboración Hemisférica
    • UMIA: Collaborative Scholarship in the Americas
    • CCS: Using Computational Mapping to Communicate Culture
    • CHC: A Collection of Historical Gems
    • – CHC: La “joya” de las Colecciones Cubanas
    • UMIA: A Hub for Caribbean Research
    • UM Hillel: Connecting to Jewish Cuba
    • UM Hillel: A Vibrant Patronato, the Cuban Jewish Community
    • UM Hillel: Student Perspectives from Cuba
    • ‘Cane Talks: Examining the Culture of Cuba

Science as Diplomacy

Science as Diplomacy
Slider

The Rosenstiel School’s final lecture of the 2017 Sea Secrets series focused on using science diplomacy to bring marine science together in the U.S. and Cuba and was held at the new Frost Science Museum.

At a time when science seems under attack and truth is contested, researchers in Miami are using the discipline to bridge the 90-mile and decades-long gap with scientists in Cuba.

The recent re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. is opening new avenues for scientific investigation and environmental conservation.

“It’s funny—usually the environment is the last thing we agree on but in this case, it’s what brought the two countries together,” said Fernando Bretos, curator of ecology and director of MUVE (Museum Volunteers for the Environment) at the new Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, and the first lecturer.

The discussion, titled “Coral Reefs and Science Diplomacy: Bridging the Gap with Cuba,” was held Thursday in the planetarium of the state-of-the-art Frost Science Museum in downtown Miami and was the first scientific talk hosted at the Museum.

“We are eager to work together on what we anticipate will be a long collaboration between the university and the museum,” said Dean Roni Avissar of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, who opened the final lecture of the 2017 Sea Secrets Lecture Series, presented by the Rosenstiel School and the Ocean Research and Education Foundation.

About the Video

Andrew Baker, associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and of Rosenstiel’s Coral Reef Futures Lab, presents at the final Sea Secrets lecture of 2017.

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Bretos, who has a personal connection to Cuba—his parents came to the United States under Operation Pedro Pan—has been collaborating with Cuban marine scientists for 18 years. His research focuses mainly on sea turtles in Guanahacabibes National Park and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, located on the western tip of the island.

The park, and other coastal areas of the island, have some of the most pristine waters and wild marine ecosystems.

Top: Fernando Bretos, curator of ecology and director of MUVE (Museum Volunteers for the Environment) at Frost Science. Bottom: Andrew Baker, Andrew Baker, associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and head of Rosenstiel’s Coral Reef Futures Lab.
Top: Fernando Bretos, curator of ecology and director of MUVE (Museum Volunteers for the Environment) at Frost Science. Bottom: Andrew Baker, Andrew Baker, associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and head of Rosenstiel’s Coral Reef Futures Lab.

Bretos highlighted the Trinational Initiative for Marine Science and Conservation in the Gulf of Mexico and Western Caribbean, started in 2007, as a meeting platform for Cuban and U.S. scientists, and expanded to include Mexican scientists, he said, to help to buffer any tension between the U.S. and Cuba and allowed the work to flow much more smoothly.

“Cuba is somewhat of a mecca for turtles,” said Bretos, an alumnus of the Rosenstiel School. “It has a huge amount of beach, feeding habitat and large expanses of sea grass.”

There are progressive coastal development and preservation policies in place in Cuba, said Bretos, and coastal areas are managed pretty well, but it’s an issue of scale, which may become problematic with increasing tourism to the island.

Increasing tourism to Cuba, and global anthropogenic changes to the environment are harmful to coral reef ecosystems as well as sea turtles and other marine mammals.

“Coral reefs are dying around the world in great numbers, for many reasons, but perhaps the most important reason is climate change and warming sea surface temperatures,” started Andrew Baker, an associate professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School and the second lecturer.

He started off with the bad news, he said, to provide some background on the good news—using molecular genomics and collaboration with Cuban scientists to help save the world’s reefs—and to communicate why Cuba’s coral reefs are so interesting and how they can play a role in replenishing dying or dead corals.

The warming sea surface temperatures stress corals, causing the critical partnership of algal symbionts—zooxanthellae, which live on the corals and give them their beautiful colors—to break down in a process called coral bleaching. During coral bleaching, the corals expel these algae, lose their coloration and turn white, and often die.

Corals can recover from bleaching, explained Baker, but if they don’t, they die.

“As a coral biologist and conservation scientist, the goal is, if we can’t prevent corals from bleaching, we can at least give them routes to recover so that they don’t go down this one-way path and point of no return,” said Baker, head of Rosenstiel’s Coral Reef Futures Lab.

One solution Baker is working on to help save the world’s coral reef ecosystems? A method that uses the same science behind popular DNA genome sequencing services like 23andme and Ancestry.com.

“Using these molecular genomic methods, we can assess the connectivity of corals around all these different regions (in the Caribbean), in an attempt to try and figure out how these coral reefs are connected to one another,” he said.

Analyzing satellite imagery, Cuba is very interesting from an environmental conservation perspective, explained Baker. Heat maps of water around the region show that there are very distinct thermal temperatures throughout the area.

“There are areas in Cuba that are both exceptionally cool and exceptionally warm; the difference is about 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Baker. “That’s the global temperature increase we’re expecting to see within the next century. Essentially, corals in one area could outlast by a century the corals in another area.”

Corals along the southern coast of Cuba are particularly heat-tolerant. Baker and his fellow researchers are using heat maps to help them consider moving the more heat-tolerant corals to new places, as a way of helping restore reefs in one area, in the hope that corals will be more heat-tolerant overall and better able to replenish and recolonize reefs.

Baker pointed out that coral bleaching is going to become more frequent and more severe in the coming years. The amount of coral that we’re losing means that we may lose coral reefs as we know them, he said, as these systems that generate lots of biodiversity.

“Biological diversity is the stuff of life that ultimately provides robustness to ecosystems,” said Baker. “Biologists will tell you this all the time, that diversity provides resilience.”

Baker’s research focuses on interventions that try to increase biological diversity in populations.

“There’s a very good argument to be made about the assisted immigration of Cuban corals to the U.S. to boost diversity and ultimately resilience,” said Baker. “And there’s some parallels here in human life as well.”

He recognized that some of his talk focused on the bad news of how climate change is affecting our coral reefs, including how the reefs are the first ecosystem that we’re likely to lose as a result of global warming. But we can’t lose hope, he added.

“We have to balance the cost of doing nothing with the fear of doing something,” said Baker. “Science has an important role to play in determining what that something should be.”

- JESSICA M. CASTILLO / UM News

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