The healthiest reef in the Caribbean, full stop. Silky and Caribbean reef sharks on every dive, goliath grouper the size of…The healthiest reef in the Caribbean, full stop. Silky and Caribbean reef sharks on every dive, goliath grouper the size of cars, and, uniquely, American crocodiles in the mangrove channels that you can snorkel with. Coral cover here is what the whole region looked like before the 1980s. Columbus named it for Queen Isabella in 1494. Fidel Castro, a keen diver and fisherman, closed the archipelago to commercial fishing in 1996 and capped tourism at around 1,000 divers a year. The politics were incidental; the ecological result is the strongest argument for no-take zones in the hemisphere. Anchorage: Liveaboard-only under Cuban rules; a strictly limited number of vessels licensed. Extensive sheltered mangrove channels. Hazards: No site-specific hazards noted, brief normally. Meer