SARASOTA — When a science conference delegation from Cuba heard their visas to visit the United States were approved, they specifically requested the trip include a stop in Sarasota.
But it wasn’t for the city’s world-famous beaches; it was for a tour of the acclaimed Mote Marine Laboratory.
“Sarasota has this significant science institute,” said Guillermo Garcia, one of the three Cuban marine scientists and a government official who the Environmental Defense Fund invited to Washington D.C., to meet with other researchers and scientists this week.
Garcia said he was familiar with Mote because of the work the local marine research institute has been conducting in Cuba for years.
“We have common issues in research (of marine biology),” he said Friday afternoon as his hosts took the delegation on a tour of the facilities on City Island, a part of the city of Sarasota.
“They have been very open minded in the cooperation with us on an equal basis.”
Cooperation was the theme of a morning program where scientists and staff at Mote gave presentations on the work they were doing and how they would like to collaborate with their Cuban counterparts.
Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote, said the visit is part of the ongoing conversation in marine science between the U.S. and Cuba over the last three years, such as the shark study involving Mote staff and scientists and students from the University of Havana.
Creating liaisons with scientific researchers in Cuba is important for researchers in the U.S., Hueter said.
“The reason to work in Cuba is because it ecologically doesn’t serve science to work as if Cuba doesn’t exist,” he said. “It’s like trying to predict hurricanes with a whole set of satellites missing — it creates a big hole in our data.”
The maps, graphs and charts projected during the morning meeting illustrated the need for cooperation.
With Cuba only 90 miles from Key West, the habitat of many marine animals includes the waters that separate the two nations.
“We share the same sea,” said Garcia.
A lobster born in Florida and growing up in Cuba does not know the difference of national boundaries, he said.
Garcia is an expert in coastal zone science and management, and the director of the National Aquarium of Cuba.
He spoke of the similar missions Mote and his institution share.
Pedro Alcolado is a senior researcher at Cuba’s Institute of Oceanology and gave a presentation on the success his nation is having in preserving coral reefs.
Working to better manage the coastal areas of the island nation, Dalia Salabarria, director of the Cuban Center for Environmental Information, Management and Education, told the audience at Mote that the main problems affecting the coastal environment are the same as those in the U.S.
Cuba is working against habitat destruction, over-exploitation of the natural resources, pollution, loss of bio-diversity, climate change and other environmentally degrading issues.
Luis Barreras, a specialist in international cooperation in Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, said his country and the U.S. have a long history of cooperation on scientific research projects going back to the 19th century, but it has become more difficult over the last 18 years.
One of the biggest hurdles to full collaboration is the difficulty of Cuban scientists to travel to the U.S., Barreras said.
Dan Whittle, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund who helped facilitate the paperwork for the visas, said there have been restrictions on travel between the two countries since the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
But even with those restrictions, scientific exchanges were common until the passage of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, which made travel to the U.S. from Cuba even more difficult.
“We have everything to lose if we don’t work together with Cuba (on common environmental issues), Whittle said.
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