46 DECEMBER 2022 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG Islands (UVI). It is the only 1862 public, co-ed, historically black college and university (HBCU). The School of Agriculture is currently offering six certificate programs, including Aquaculture, and in the near future will also offer additional degrees in Aquaponics, among others. The rationale for UVI to offer agricultural science programs is motivated by the fact that 97 percent of the food is imported to the insular territory, creating food supply chain insecurity, and to explore innovative and sustainable agricultural practices that strengthen commercial agriculture in the Caribbean. Fisheries A census conducted at the end of 1917 (Bureau of Census 1918) reported some of the species landed at that time: barracuda, bonito, cravelle, grouper, hogfish, jackfish, kingfish, mackerel, redfish, red snapper, rockfish, yellowtail, spiny lobster, and turtles. It was mentioned that crabs, oysters, and clams were caught but not in commercial quantities. Territory-wide, 770,000 pounds of fish are landed on average annually by approximately 200 commercial fishers. As a group, artisanal fishers land more than US$ 5 million of fish annually. Most commercial fishers harvest their catch and sell it on the same day or the next, although some fishers sell directly to restaurants, at fish markets or roadside stands with a profit margin of around 15-17 percent (Crosson and Hibbert 2017). Historical landings of aggregate commercial fish and shellfish harvest reported since 2003 for the USVI are collected by the Division of Fish and Wildlife and reported to the National Marine Fisheries Service (Fig. 1). The decline in landings could be due to multiple causes. The most likely is the attrition of fishers in the USVI without replacement. A moratorium on the issuance of new commercial fishing licenses was implemented in 2001 as a temporary measure to revise the commercial fishing laws. The number of fishers was reduced by a third over those 20 years, dropping from 395 to 245 territory-wide. Considering the increasing demand for locally caught species, it seems logical that there is a big opportunity for broadening the Opportunities in Aquaculture in the U.S. Virgin Islands Herbert Quintero, Donald Bailey, Sennai Habtes and Nicole Angeli FIGURE 1. Domestic landings (tons) of fish and shellfish in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 2003-2019. Source: NMFS (2004-2021). Fisheries of the United States (2003-2019). The U.S. Virgin Islands are geographically part of the Lesser Antilles in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, located about 40 miles (64 km) east of Puerto Rico, 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, Florida and 1,442 miles from New York City. The U.S. Virgin Islands is comprised of three large islands —St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John — and over 50 offshore islands and cays, most of which are not presently inhabited. The history of the Virgin Islands is complex and different to other places long colonized in the Caribbean and the Americas. Colonization of the Virgin Islands was driven by different European powers, with Denmark as one of the last countries to start a colony in the West Indies. The United States started negotiations to buy the Virgin Islands in 1865, which came to fruition on March 31, 1917. The islands were purchased from Denmark for $25 million in gold for the purpose of developing a naval base to protect Panama Canal traffic, assuming control of the islands, a week before the U.S. entered World War I (Cadaval 1990, Willocks 1995). Today the USVI is an unincorporated territory of the U.S., run by an elected governor, under the jurisdiction of the president of the United States of America administered under the Department of the Interior, thus its residents are American citizens. Today the economy of the USVI relies strongly on tourism, which makes it very vulnerable to severe impacts during periods of natural disasters or emergencies, as it been the case in the last five years, with hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, and the COVID-19 pandemic that caused the decline in the global economy in 2020 (USVIEDA and Camoin Associates 2021). An effort to diversify and create a more resilient economy is needed, and one of the tools for achieving this goal relies on education. The University of the Virgin Islands Discussions for establishing an institution of higher learning in the USVI began in the 1950s, and in 1962 the College of the Virgin Islands (CVI) was founded as a junior college, with two campuses, one each on St. Thomas and St. Croix. In 1972, the U.S. Congress authorized Land Grant status for CVI, and created an Agriculture Experiment Station (AES) and Cooperative Extension Service (CES). In 1986 CVI became the University of the Virgin
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