The Sabana-Camaguey Archipelago extends 465 km along the central north coast of Cuba. Due to its high biodiversity and beautiful keys, beaches, coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves that archipelago is the subject of an ambitious program for biodiversity conservation and tourism development. Furthermore, this archipelago provides 20% of the Cuban fishery resources. The success of both tourism and fisheries is based upon ecosystem health. Thus, protecting biodiversity is essential both strategically and economically. To protect biodiversity and encourage sustainable development of this nationally and globally valuable region, a strategic plan and recommendations for management was needed. The necessary data gathering on biological, physical and socioeconomic factors and their analysis was accomplished under UNDP/GEF Project CUB/92/G31. Also identified were the environmental issues, their causes, trends and interactions, stakeholders involved, and ecologically sensitive areas. Developing the strategic plan and recommendations required the active participation of some 500 researchers and technicians from 12 different ministries, and 5 provinces. Key criteria for the plan were sustainable use of the environments and preservation of biodiversity, for guiding resort design as well as management and economic development. The principal features of the plan are: (a) the establishment of an authority for Integrated Coastal Zone Management for the Sabana-Camagüey Ecosystem, (b) a protected area system included within a large multiple-use marine protected area covering the entire archipelago and part of mainland coast, (c) a network of five environmental monitoring laboratories and (d) programs for capacity building and public environmental education and awareness. The huge amount of gathered information has been assembled in a comprehensive Geographic Information System (more than 150 thematic maps), which are powerful tools for decision making concerning environmental management and sustainable economic development of the region. A next phase is aimed at formal adoption and implementation of prioritized actions of the proposed strategy.

Eddy motion in the Caribbean Sea is described on the basis of sea level anomalies deduced from ERS 1 altimetry data corrected with TOPEX/POSEIDON data during the 15 months of the Exact Repeat Mission (October 1992 to December 1993). Both cyclones and anticyclones were observed in the satellite data as anomalies originating in the Venezuelan Basin or entering the Caribbean through the Antillean passages, mainly the St. Lucia Channel, Anegada Passage, and north of Trinidad. The diameter of the eddies ranged from a few tens of kilometers to 700 km. Advection speeds were typically 20 to 30 cm s-1 and the eddies were energetic (Kinetic Energy > 0.6 m2 s-2). Their lifetime of 3 to 4 months was determined in general by their interaction with topography. Most eddy activity was eroded and disappeared at the Central American Rise area, although a few eddies crossed into the Cayman Sea through the Chibcha Passage. Some eddies also entered the Cayman Sea from outside the Caribbean through the Windward Passage. The Panama-Colombia Gyre was evident only during the tropical rainy season. A large cyclonic eddy was formed there during the period of maximum precipitation, when strong meridional salinity and wind speed gradients occurred. Eddy production in the central Caribbean appears to be associated with the interaction of the meandering Caribbean Current and the strong wind curl.

In this work, as an example of the relation between habitat and resources in coral reefs, landscape scale is used to analyze the distribution of fish richness species and fish production by trophic groups. In order to characterize reef landscape, or reef-scape, as a function of its richness of species and trophic groups, 47 sample transects were done. Using Canonical Correspondence Analysis, the relationship between the median biomass fish community trophic groups and 19 reefscape characteristics revealed three principal groups: 1) fish and zooplankton feeders associated with Cordillera (I), Calcareous Bottom and Algal Mats (K), and Sandy Bottoms with Algal Mats (G) reefscapes; 2) "shelled" invertebrate feeders and generalized carnivores related to Debris (A), Pasture (B), Meadow (C), Sandy Bottom with Branch Coral Patches (F), and Algal Mats (L) reefscapes; and 3) herbivores and sessile invertebrate feeders associated with Dead Structure and Soft Coral (D), Dead Structures and Algae Covered Massive Corals (E), Algal mats on Dead Structures (H), and Calcareous Bottom with Palithoa (J) reefscapes. Environmental characteristics were found to determine fish group presence. For fish and zooplankton feeders these included depth, presence of encrusting biota, algal coverage, and massive, soft and encrusting coral coverage. For generalized carnivores and "shelled" invertebrate feeders, they included dead structure, pebble, sand, branch coral and sea grass coverage, and for herbivores and sessile invertebrate feeders they included calcareous substrat. Maximum mean biomass, production and consumption was estimated in the Meadow (C) and minimum in the Algal mats on Dead Structures (H) reefscapes. Maximum mean rechness species was found in the Cordillera (I), Calcareous Bottom and Algal Mats (K), and Calcareous Bottom with Palithoa (J) reefscapes. The reefscape scale offers an option for the analysis, interpretation and management of coral reef resources.

The Florida Keys tropical marine coral reef ecosystem is a national treasure that supports multibillion dollar industries for fisheries and tourism. However, due to intense human population growth in south Florida, the Keys ecosystem is increasingly "at risk" from the effects of severe overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction that threaten the system's ecological and economic integrity. The extent of resource declines over the last several decades have been greatly mitigated by production from the Dry Tortugas, a relatively remote upstream region located at the southern end of the Florida Keys. The region possesses unique circulation patterns that play an important role in the dynamics of region-wide biophysical processes and provide export of larval and adult biomass to depauperate areas. But the Tortugas' capacity to sustain this critical support function has been rapidly eroded under traditional fishery management regimes, a trend likely to continue under current projections of human population growth and persistent recreational and commercial fleet expansions in size, range, and effective fishing power in competition for finite coral reef resources.

An innovative plan to establish a 185 mi2 "no take" marine reserve in the Dry Tortugas has been recently proposed by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) and National Park Service (NPS). Success of this effort will depend greatly upon the availability of reliable data to assist both reserve design and to provide the quantitative baseline necessary to forecast changes and ultimately assess reserve efficacy. In this paper we use a systems approach to develop high precision estimates of reef fish abundance, size structure, and community composition from a collaborative spatially-intensive sampling survey of reef fish and coral reef resources conducted during late May to early July, 1999, with sponsorship from the National Undersea Research Center, Center for Marine Conservation, NOAA/FKNMS and NPS. A reliable non-destructive stationary visual SCUBA diver reef fish census method was used in conjunction with digital laser video cameras, limited deployments of a remotely operating submersible vehicle with mounted camera arrays, and use of split-beam hydroacoustics. We used a two-stage stratified random design configuration to guide selection of about 460 survey stations, where we obtained an average of 2 replicate diver samples plus a number of physical and habitat variables. While we found substantial evidence of overfishing in the Tortugas region during our survey, we also encountered rich biodiversity, and "discovered" two new areas of luxuriant coral coverage: a large area of 'Sherwood Forest'-type habitat that extends about 25 x 2 miles along the western Tortugas; and, 'Loggerhead Forest' located between the National park and Tortugas Bank. We summarize by showing how explicit modeling of the linkages between fish community distribution, abundance and size structure in relation to key "habitat" characteristics can provide critical guidance for future cost-effective sampling and resource assessment efforts.