Underwater wonderland at risk

(CBS News) 

Fifty miles off the shores of Cuba lies one of the world's healthiest coral reefs, an underwater Eden full of rare and endangered species. Anderson Cooper and "60 Minutes" cameras take viewers on an underwater adventure to this colorful world that could disappear someday if mankind isn't more careful. Cooper's story about "The Gardens of the Queen" reef will be broadcast on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Dec. 18 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.

One hundred feet deep in crystal clear Caribbean waters, with sharks angling by, neon-colored fish schooling and a 200-lb Goliath grouper hovering a few feet away, Cooper interviews marine biologist David Guggenheim of the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C., using special scuba masks that permit them to talk underwater. "Do you ever see groupers this big elsewhere," says Cooper, bubbles rising from his regulator valve. "Never, never in my life. It's a critically endangered species," says Guggenheim, who is familiar with many of the world's ocean reefs.

Reflecting after one of their dives, Guggenheim tells Anderson Cooper he is impressed with what he saw on the reef, which the Cuban government has protected from commercial fishing and development. "The corals are healthy. The fish are healthy and abundant. There are predators here, large sharks," Guggenheim says, noting that sharks "are a very important part of the ecosystem and we've kind of forgotten that, because we've taken about 90 percent of sharks out of the world's oceans over the last 50 years."

Just like the large sharks and the groupers they sustain, coral reefs themselves are in danger. Guggenheim shows footage of a reef in Veracruz, Mexico, he visited, where he says he found 90 percent of the reef dead. Scientists say coral is succumbing to a complex combination of environmental factors including pollution, agricultural run-off, coastal development, over-fishing, and rising ocean temperatures, which researchers believe is causing a phenomenon called "bleaching," that causes the coral to turn white and sometimes die.

There has been a little bleaching at "The Gardens of the Queen," but the coral tends to recover after a few months, leading scientists to wonder whether there is something about this area that might provide clues to saving or regenerating the rest of the oceans' reefs, says Guggenheim. "Maybe it's because this ecosystem is being protected, it's got a leg up on other ecosystems around the world that are being heavily fished and heavily impacted by pollution, so that makes it more resilient."

[reefer27]

RE: "Fifty miles off the shores of Cuba lies one of the world's healthiest coral reefs, an underwater Eden"

This entire segment of 60 minutes was most misleading. The reef shown in the segment was NT a healthy Caribbean coral reef, but a highly degraded reef with less than 10% live coral cover. Apparently, neither of the main participants had ever seen a truly health Caribbean reef, where coral surfaces were not overwhelmed with macro-algae and dead polyps.

The sharks and grouper scenes were also misleading - after 40 years of exploring and studying coral reefs of the Caribbean I can safely say that the only plausible reason so many sharks were concentrated in the reef area filmed - or why the goliath grouper behaved as portrayed - was that the location had been used a feeding station where divers have been feeding the fish. This in itself is bad conservation practice.

Sorry Anderson - nice try but no cigar - the entire segment was full of inaccuracies, platitudes and pure deception when it came to reef fish behavior.

[seavive]

What a glorious story on The Gardens of the Queen! There are so few positive oceanic stories anymore, but this one gave a ray of hope that maybe the terrible decline in our oceans is a tide that might be turned around.

Unbearably disheartening, though, to be reminded that 90% of the sharks have been fished out. Sharks are vital to the oceans and therefore vital to the human race. Sharks have survived for 450 million years, but (in a large part due to an incomprehensible appetite for shark fin soup) our sharks may be gone within 10 years if the brutal hunting continues. Once sharks are de-finned, they're too often treated as trash and tossed back into the ocean to die. Nearly a hundred million a year. Is that really worth some bowls of soup that are made from the nearly tasteless cartilage of their fins?

We need a world-wide ban on the import of shark fins and shark products. Many countries ban the practice of finning, but that's little more than lip-service as there's no way to know if just the fin was taken unless the shark comes into the market with the fin intact. Regrettably, those big shark bodies take up too much cargo space compared to their extremely valuable fins and so their live bodies are tossed overboard to slowly drown.

If we're going to step up and save endangered species so vitally important to the planet, we need news stories like this one that remind us just what we have at stake. Thank you 60 minutes, Anderson Cooper and all the devoted people in marine biology.