Sharks… deep-water rigs… coastal development… fish for tourists… empty markets.
As someone who studies the ocean, these are the words that pop out at me when reading
National Geographic’s November cover story “
Cuba’s New Now.”
Paolo Pellegrin’s images reveal poignant photos of weary faces and urban crowds, but the ocean is generally an unseen character in the drama.
Still, when reading the article, you don’t need to be a marine biologist to sense that the ocean is inseparable from the modern Cuban narrative.
Cuban fisherman prepares a giant spotted eagle ray on the shores near the site of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Photo credit: Clare Fieseler
In this blog series, I’ve selected images that add some illustration to ocean issues mentioned in the article.
Some photos are my own, others captured by colleagues.
All deal with the critical role of the ocean that surrounds an island teetering between isolation and globalization.
Now, my grasp of the Cuban experience is not first-hand.
I share these photos as a witness to ocean change across the Caribbean.
By good fortune, I’ve been a recent explorer of Cuba’s coastline.
Before visiting Cuba for research, I had romanticized about a people and an environment trapped in time.
My intent is that these photos and insights convey the opposite: this patch of ocean is dynamic, so are its users.
Cuba’s waters pulse with bounty, danger, and hope while its people continually give and take
from these waters to adapt for tomorrow.
Food Woes and Cascading Effects at Sea
”Hunting down groceries in poorly stocked markets, like this butcher shop in central Havana, is a daily challenge. Cubans receive ration books that secure staples like rice, beans, and oil at low prices. But it’s not enough to live on.” pg 46, National Geographic, November 2012
Food security is a focal point of author
Cynthia Gorney’s feature article – and of many conversations I’ve heard around Havana.
In Africa, waning fisheries have been
linked to cascading socio-ecological deterioration on land (the results proving just strange enough for a
National Geographic TV series).
Peer into Cuba’s protein-poor markets and imagine Africa’s situation, flipped.
Is the empty butcher shop in the article suggestive of creeping pressure on alternative protein sources?
Surrounded by water, will Cubans increasingly turn to “
from the left” fishing, unmanaged by Raul’s reach?
It’s unclear how much non-commercial fishing contributes to Cuba’s total landings managed through its 15 fishing associations (the Smithsonian has published
Cuba’s commercial catch data in English).
Already the UN reports that 87.6 % of Cuba’s fisheries in at a critical stage, with a 95% decrease of the region’s iconic Nassau Grouper.
While diving in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, I saw few Nassau Grouper.
I assume, from their catch, the men fishing from shore did too. They had speared a giant spotter eagle ray, something not uncommon for Mexicans but less traditional for Cubans.
Not for sale, the ray was for
la parilla – the grill. “There’s a lot of meat in the wings,” the eldest explained.
This relative of the shark is
protected in Florida; I watched it hacked in front of me feeling, surprisingly, little condemnation.
My time in a discordant, enigmatic Cuba had fatigued the conservationist inside me.
All morning I had watched the youngest of the men appear at 50-foot depths.
Unlike me, he was unaided by dive gear, only a spear in hand.
The spear’s velocity echoed underwater.
Pheeeww. Thud!
The fish impaled that day were small and infrequent.
The giant ray was a lucky pull, pedaled home to backyard grills on bicycles.
Revisiting the images I snapped that day, I believe one conveys the same Cuban story of food insecurity captured in this month’s
National Geographic.
In print, a 1950s Chevy roars past the echoing Havana butcher shop.
In mine, a hand-rolled cigarette dangles against the turquoise seascape that provides a meal untethered by ration cards.
As someone who studies the ocean, these are the words that pop out at me when reading National Geographic’s November cover story “
Cuba’s New Now.”
Paolo Pellegrin’s images reveal poignant photos of weary faces and urban crowds, but the ocean is generally an unseen character in the drama.
Still, when reading the article, you don’t need to be a marine biologist to sense that the ocean is inseparable from the modern Cuban narrative.
In this blog
series, I’ve selected images that add some illustration to ocean issues mentioned in the article.
Some photos are my own, others captured by colleagues.
All deal with the critical role of the ocean that surrounds an island teetering between isolation and globalization.
Now, my grasp of the Cuban experience is not first-hand.
I share these photos as a witness to ocean change across the Caribbean.
By good fortune, I’ve been a recent explorer of Cuba’s coastline. Before visiting Cuba for research, I had romanticized about a people and an environment trapped in time.
My intent is that these photos and insights convey the opposite: this patch of ocean is dynamic, so are its users.
Cuba’s waters pulse with bounty, danger, and hope while its people continually give and take from these waters to adapt for tomorrow.
When traveling in Cuba, should you order lobster? Well, it depends.
“There is a term Cuban house wives use as they make their rounds in search of the day’s family food: pollo por pescado
. It means, ‘chicken for fish’: You have promised fish for dinner but in the store there is no fish, so you get a little chicken and pretend its fish. Where is all the fish? Ah, any Cuban will tell you… The fish is in the restaurants. The fish is in the hotel buffets, a popular amenity of tourists where long counters are piled high…” pg. 50, National Geographic, November 2012
Whether in a coastal village or a colorful Castro-fied restaurant, I found plenty of seafood when traveling in Cuba.
That’s easy for any tourist.
The real challenge for me was matching my plate with my moral compass.
Near the sleepy village of Playa Larga, there’s a government-run restaurant that targets tourists peering into one of Cuba’s
blue holes.
It peddles lobster almost as hard as Che Guevara t-shirts.
The waiter really pushed the local surf-n-turf special on me: farm-raised alligator and lobster tail.
My colleague and I were on research budgets; we reluctantly split it.
We faked interest in a FIFA game, gobbled grub, and soaked in the lush, canopied setting between dives.
We paid the check with raised eyebrows, realizing we had eaten for 1/4 the price elsewhere.
About forty Canadians began bustling towards the shaded tables with a Cuban minder.
These tourists were about to dine a stone’s throw from the turquoise sea, over looking an underwater cave, en route to visit the Caribbean’s largest wetland.
They almost all ordered, you guessed it, the pricey lobster and alligator special.
I couldn’t blame them; the food matched the ambiance.
Isn’t this why they came to Cuba in the first place?
This though crossed my mind: should the seafood-seeking tourist be celebrated?
Under Raul’s new order of business tolerance, ordering seafood from a mom-and-pop shop could, in theory, funnel money more directly to fishermen.
Think about it: for the first time in decades, Cuba’s mindful traveler can avoid the government middle-man and distribute tourism dollars to private, small business owners (who’s average monthly salary from the government would otherwise be about $20).
The fishing docks of Playa Larga, a small coastal village sitting on Cuba's Bay of Pigs.
Photo credit: Abel Valdivia
Fancying ourselves mindful, my colleague and I mostly avoided the government-run tourist hubs, preferring to spending our CUCs (the Cuban currency for foreigners) at B&B-style
casas particulares along the
coast.
That’s how we ended up in sleepy Playa Larga (see image above).
Our entrepreneurial hosts served us lobster tail every night, if we wanted, for less than $4.00USD a meal.
Surely, I thought, with over thirty pastel canoes tethered just yards from the B&B, the local fishers of Playa Larga must be benefitting from the up start of lobster-seeking B&Bs in town.
Wasn’t my lobster-hungry, sustainably-traveling tummy contributing to the sleepy Playa Larga economy?
Or, as this month’s article suggests, was my appetite stealing from Cuban’s plates?
And, important for my environmental ethic, how does this all trickle back to help sustain the ocean?
Once you consider the coagulating, percolating force of Cuba’s black market, tracing the web of sustainable tourism gets sticky.
It turns out that the lobster I was eating at the B&B was purchased on the black market.
It had to have been.
As my former grad school classmate Daylin Munoz-Nunez highlights in her masters research:
In Cuba, 90% of the lobster is exported to the international market and the other 10% is sent to the government-controlled tourism sector (Puga & de León, 2003). Therefore, there is no lobster supplied to the local market. This creates a high internal demand for the lobster on the black market, despite private and recreational lobster fisheries [being] total prohibited.
Meaning: the fishery that got lobster on my non-government-controlled tourism plate operates completely under the radar, completely unmanaged.
Which is the last thing Cuban lobsters need.
The fishery collapsed in 1990, with the government since scrambling to improve management with scant resources.
What my plate took from the ocean went un-accounted and, if anything, contributed to the fishery’s consistently declining landings since 1990.
Upon returning from Cuba, I was still bothered by this moral fog where seafood and small-scale tourism meet. I reread
Daylin’s writing about the Cuba’s Spiny Lobster Fishery and found some illuminating fact for the lobster-eating traveler:
- Fines for illegal lobster take are in Cuban Pesos (the local currency) but most illegal fishers get paid in the much higher valued CUC (the foreign-based currency). So there is little economic incentive to stop illegal harvest even when caught.
- During March 2009, the price of a lobster tail in the black market was about CUC12 $2 or USD $2.16. While the restaurant prices vary between USD $20-$35.13. In other words, even when tourists can afford eating lobster at legal high prices illegal options are attractive at 1/10 the price.
- The number of spiny lobsters illegally taken might not be as significant as those taken by the Cuba’s commercial lobster fleet. Their composition, however, may encompass sub-legal size lobsters and females carrying eggs – which undermines management.
With all that in mind, should I order lobster the next time I’m in Cuba?
Now — As a conservation-leaning biologist, I support Cuba’s efforts to rebuild its fisheries through monitoring, management, and fisherman compliance.
As a conscious traveler, I support small business owners that boost local, suppressed economies.
My experience in Cuba highlights the growing pains of a burgeoning business sector and antiquated fisheries policies.
Then again, the growing pains of governance seems a common theme in this month’s NGM article — and most of the articles I’ve read about Cuba this year.
At the moment, I see no clear answers for my moral compass.
The next time I’m exploring Cuba’s coast, I’ll wait for the $30.00 lobster tail in the Havanna high-rise.
Or, better, yet, I’ll just stick to the chicken.
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