Abstract

The U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has a tourism-dominated economy that has strong relationships with the resources provided by its tropical marine environment, including commercial and recreational fishing. While fishing is traditionally a profound aspect of life and culture in the USVI, the small-scale commercial fishing sector is vulnerable to uncontrollable variables including hurricanes, global pandemics, and changes in adjacent industries such as tourism. During the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, the USVI were impacted by two major hurricanes, Irma and Maria, which left fishing communities devastated due to infrastructural damage and gear loss. In 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic disrupted global markets, especially small-scale fisheries that were dependent on the tourism sector for economic stability. While hurricane impact assessments and preliminary COVID-19 assessments have been conducted on USVI fisheries, there has not been a socio-economic assessment of how fisheries have changed and adapted overall in the last seven years due to hurricane and pandemic losses. Using pre-existing survey data completed by NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center on hurricanes and COVID-19 impacts in conjunction with economics and landing data collected throughout the decade, we provide a meta-analysis on the interconnections between various sectors and stressors in the USVI and how the small-scale fishing fleet enhanced socio-economic resilience.