Columbus would still recognise much of the remote southern third of the island today: a landscape patchworked with swamps, mangroves, beaches, coral seas, limestone forests and caves painted with prehistoric drawings, all safeguarded in the 1,455sq km region called South of the Isle of Youth Protected Area of Managed Resources (APRM). Within the APRM"s marine protected area, other vulnerable creatures such as Antillean manatee, hammerheads, elkhorn coral and marine turtles .