The Gardens of the Queen

60 Minutes cameras take you on an underwater adventure off the Cuban coast to one of the world's most pristine and vibrant coral reefs, known as the Gardens of the Queen. Anderson Cooper scuba dives with marine biologist David Guggenheim, dodging giant groupers and sharks, to explore this increasingly rare oasis. Scientists estimate that 25 percent of the world's reefs have died off and much of what's left is at risk.

The following is a script of "The Gardens of the Queen" which aired on Dec. 18, 2011. Anderson Cooper is the correspondent. Andy Court and Anya Bourg, producers.

Coral reefs are often called "the rainforests of the ocean." They're not just biologically diverse and stunningly beautiful, they're a source of food and income for nearly a billion people. They're also in danger. Scientists estimate that 25 percent of the world's reefs have died off and much of what's left is at risk. There is, however, one spot in the Caribbean that marine biologists describe as a kind of "under-water Eden," a coral reef largely untouched by man. It's called the Gardens of the Queen, and getting permission to go there isn't easy. It's located off the coast of Cuba, and as you might have already guessed, there are no direct flights.

Anderson Cooper: Swimming with sharks
Anderson Cooper and his producers go scuba diving at a pristine coral reef in Cuba, where they are surrounded by sharks and see extraordinary sights.

Our first stop was Havana, Cuba's crumbling capitol where music fills the air, old cars seem to run forever and the only ads you see are for the revolution. From there, we drove for six hours through the countryside and then took a boat for six hours more until we got to a stretch of tiny islands, 50 miles off Cuba's southern coast. The islands are little more than patches of mangroves and small spits of sand. The only inhabitants who greeted us: hermit crabs and iguanas. They seemed indifferent to our arrival.

It was Christopher Columbus who named this area the Gardens of the Queen after his Queen Isabella, but the real gardens he probably never even got a glimpse of...to see them, you have to go underwater.

David Guggenheim: This is really the most incredibly well protected and flourishing reef I've ever seen.

We went diving with David Guggenheim, an American marine biologist and a senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C.

David: The corals are healthy. The fish are healthy and abundant. There are predators here, large sharks. It's the way these ecosystems really should look.

Anderson Cooper: You're saying this is like a time capsule, almost?

Guggenheim: It's a living time machine. And it's a really incredible opportunity to learn from.

We brought special scuba masks with us so we could talk underwater. Every time we went diving we could see sharks circling our boat before we even went in. David said they wouldn't bother us and we certainly hoped he was right.

The first thing you notice in this underwater Eden is the coral. It's color, it's texture. Coral isn't a rock or a plant. It's colonies of tiny animals that share a common skeleton. This is a large and relatively rare specimen of pillar coral. Those hair-like things are the tentacles of thousands of individual animals that are plucking microscopic plankton from the water. Coral is one of the oldest living animals on the planet. Some of it is said to be 4,000 years old, older than the tallest redwood.

What makes coral reefs so important is that they host an extraordinary variety of fish. Some come here for shelter from predators. Others come here to eat.

Cooper: I've been diving in many places all over the world and I've never seen so many large fish. Like this grouper here. There's about six or seven Caribbean reef sharks like this circling around right now. Scientists will tell you the presence of so many sharks and different species of sharks, is a sign of a very healthy reef.

Guggenheim: When we call coral reefs the rainforests of the ocean, we're talking about the diversity of life that lives on these reefs. The relationships among these animals, the fact that the corals create a home for the fish, that they're little fish that feed big fish, that some of these little shrimp walk inside the mouths of the grouper and clean parasites off of the grouper. It's a very complex web of life.

Cooper: You seem pleased to see all these predators, all these sharks around.

Guggenheim: They're a very important part of the ecosystem. And we've kind of forgotten that, because we've taken about 90 percent of the sharks out of the world's oceans over the last 50 years.

Cooper: Ninety percent of the sharks have been killed already.

Guggenheim: Ninety percent of the sharks are gone from the planet now, along with other predators like tuna and swordfish, these predators that we just love to eat.

Another predator under threat is the goliath Grouper, but here they're a common sight. This one is about 200 pounds and shows no fear of a 160-pound correspondent.

Cooper: It's amazing how sort of curious this Grouper is. It just comes up and looks you right in the eye. David, do you ever see Groupers this big elsewhere?

Guggenheim: Never, never in my life. It's a critically endangered species.

Cooper: When you say critically endangered what do you mean?

Guggenheim: Critically endangered is pretty much the highest level of endangerment before a species goes extinct completely.

The one species David wishes he didn't see thriving in the Gardens of the Queen is the lionfish. They appear to have been accidentally introduced into these waters by man. They have venomous spines and no natural predators.

Guggenheim: The lion fish is a beautiful fish. The problem is it doesn't belong here. It belongs in the Pacific. It's got a voracious appetite and it's eating the local species.

David Guggenheim is working with Fabian Pina, a Cuban marine biologist. He leads a team that has been studying the reef for the Cuban Ministry of Science. They've already identified seven species of marine life that they believe are new to science.

Cooper: We saw a 200-pound grouper. Is that the biggest grouper that there is here?

Pina: Well, no. We have seen larger than that. We have seen some specimen of goliath grouper like 400, 600 pounds.

Cooper: Four hundred, 600 pounds?

Pina: Yes. It's like a small car.

Cooper: The one I saw, the 200-pound one, I had the sense if we-- if I took a few inches too close, it would let me know.

Pina: Yeah, sure. Maybe you hear down the water, 'boom, boom.' And that's the sound that this-- like saying, 'This is my territory. So keep distance and dive and enjoy, but all the things around are mine.'

Cooper: Where do you learn to speak grouper?

Pina: Well, you know, since 16, 15 years ago.

Fabian Pina's office is little more than a shack built on posts in the water. He was starting to explain why he liked working here so much when we were interrupted by one of his neighbors.

Cooper: Wow, did you see that?

Pina: It's magnificent, yeah.

Cooper to camera operator: Did you guys get...you didn't get that? Nobody got that, did they? A huge bird swooped down...That was cool.

Fabian told us nine-foot crocodiles have paid him a visit as well.

Cooper: Really?

Pina: Yeah. Yeah.

Cooper: Just gonna readjust here and bring my leg up from dangling over the edge of the water.

Pina: Right there is a-- now is a great barracuda.

Cooper: Right there, yeah.

Pina: Right there. So this is the only place where you can see from your porch an animal like that. So it's wonderful.

It's wonderful and increasingly rare. Only after seeing a place like this can you start to fully appreciate the tragedy that's occurring elsewhere in the oceans.

Guggenheim: I went to Veracruz, Mexico, and I was told about the magnificence of the Veracruz Reefs. And when we got there, we saw that 95 percent of that reef had died and it had died quickly since the last time scientists were there. And I felt like I was going through a city, a magnificent civilization that had once stood there, but it was burned out. Nobody was there.

Scientists say the world's reefs are being harmed by a complex combination of factors; including pollution, agricultural runoff, coastal development, and overfishing. It turns out fish are essential to the health of a reef. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other leading institutions are also very concerned about climate change because they believe rising ocean temperatures are triggering a process called "bleaching" in which the coral weakens, turns white and often dies.

Guggenheim: This is a disaster in slow motion. It's been happening for decades. And it's much more difficult to see it happening, let alone get alarmed about it happening.

Cooper: Scientists are always using the term crisis. Is it really that bad, what's happening under the water?

Guggenheim: Things are really that bad. We've already lost 25 percent of the world's coral reefs. And within 20 years it'll be another 25 percent.

Fabian Pina: This is big. This is nice. This can be like 10 - 15-year-old fish.

The reason this reef's doing so well, Fabian Pina believes, is that it's far from the mainland and well-protected.

In 1996, the government of Fidel Castro, a diver himself, made this area one of the largest marine preserves in the Caribbean. Almost all commercial fishing was banned. Since then, Fabian Pina's research shows the number of fish has increased dramatically.

Cooper: How much have fish populations grown?

Pina: Between 30 and 50 percent.

Cooper: Thirty and 50 percent?

Pina: Yeah, that's huge.

Fabian and David have noticed some bleaching here, but the coral tends to recover after a few months, leading them to wonder whether there's something about this reef that's making it more resistant to threats.

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. That's one of the theories that if we do what we can locally that these reefs have a better chance of being resilient to what's happening globally.

Cooper: So something here holds the key to figuring out how to save these other reefs and bring them back, in some cases.

Guggenheim: That's what I think.

Tourism here is tightly regulated. Only 500 fly fisherman and 1,000 divers are permitted to come each year, and the fishermen have to release their catch.

Andres Jimenez helps run the only place to stay out here - a handful of boats operated by a company called Avalon. It's a joint venture between the Cuban government and an Italian company, and it employs a lot of former fishermen and their families, giving them a stake in preserving the area and keeping commercial fishing boats out.

Cooper: If there was commercial fishing here now?

Jimenez: If there was commercial fishing here or not only that, if we weren't here protecting and taking care of all the area, it would be, poof, very fast. There's no way you can keep it safe.

Cooper: All these big fish--

Jimenez: It's too big. It's too big and they're--

Cooper: All these-- all the sharks, the grouper--

Jimenez: Yeah, sharks and grouper...

Cooper: All the big fish would all be gone.

Jimenez: They would take it in one day.

The fish aren't the only creatures here that enjoy protection. The crocodiles are free to hunt in the shallow water near the islands. Even these giant rodents called jutia are fearless. Elsewhere in cuba, they're made into stew. Here no one can hunt them.

Jimenez: They feel very safe here because we would never eat one of these things.

Andres wanted to show us what the reef looked like at night. So, with some trepidation, we plunged into the black water. The darkness was so complete we felt like we were swimming through space, but we found plenty of life on the sea floor.

[Cooper: You see that. That's one big crab.]

Cooper: At night you find all sorts of sea creatures that you would never see during the day like this crab right here which we interrupted in the middle of its dinner.

Jimenez: Anderson, I want to show you this big Moray eel here, here.

The eel didn't seem to want company... so we moved on.

We spent several nights and days exploring the reef. Swimming through tunnels of living coral 100 feet below the surface.

We were so close to sharks so often it was tempting to touch them.

It takes some time to adjust to the routine wonders of this place, but after a while, even we began to feel like residents of the reef.

Guggenheim: You know, in the conservation world, the work that I do, a lot of it is pretty negative. You know? Things have gotten pretty bad. So to come to a place like this and see it so alive, you know, I feel like a teenager again. I feel like there really is hope.