An examination of fishing community designation

Stoffle, Brent William

Southeast Fisheries Science Center (U.S.), Miami Laboratory,

"This report focuses on the island, people and fisheries of St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands (USVI). In doing so it attempts to determine if the island can be considered a fishing community as defined by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. In order to do this we had to determine if there were individual communities, or if the island as a whole, could be considered substantially engaged in or dependent on fishing. We focused on three main issues; 1) the historic dependence and engagement in fishing, 2) the contemporary dependence and engagement in fishing, and 3) the socio-cultural connection to fishing. To make the argument that the island as a whole could be considered a fishing community we again examined three main issues; 1) precedence (are there other islands under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) jurisdiction that have been designated), 2) why did previous research suggest individual places rather than the whole island, and 3) how do residence patterns build an argument for island-wide designation"--Executive summary, paragraph 1.

Technical Memorandum