Culebra fishers reopen a dock—then face permits expiring

Culebra fishers – In Culebra, Puerto Rico, fishers rebuilt a once-abandoned fish landing center with donated labor and reopened it last October—only to find that climate change is only part of the struggle. As federal rules, agency disarray, and delayed disaster recovery keep r

At dawn on a mid-May Wednesday. Tomás Ayala jumps off the side of a small dinghy into the dark swell off Culebra. the Puerto Rican island municipality. He moves with a free-diver’s confidence—arms slicing through the water as he scans the reef perimeter for his target. Minutes later, he finds a large hogfish. A cloud of blood darkens the sea around it.

Back on his boat. Ayala drops the catch into a cooler. turns the motor toward shore. and starts another day that began before sunrise. The 50-year-old comes from a family of fishers—he said he started free diving for reef fish. laying lobster traps. and catching octopus when he was just eight years old. following in the footsteps of his brother and grandfather. The work still runs through him the way it always has.

But at Culebra’s waterfront, where generations gather around what the sea provides, success is now tangled in a second fight: the one over who gets to adapt, and who gets stuck waiting.

The dock Ayala depends on is a concrete one that locals restored from near-dormancy. It’s part of a villa pesquera. a “fishing village” or “fish landing center” with infrastructure meant to support traditional fisherfolk. Inside. the space includes cleaning stations. freezers. a saltwater tank for storing lobsters. and equipment for market days—plus a place to meet. Every week, the association that co-manages the villa pesquera gathers for updates and to trade challenges alongside wins.

On this day. Ayala is joined by Nicolás Gómez Andújar. a marine scientist whose father is a local fisher. They prepare the facility for the next meeting. where members will discuss federal permits they’re hoping to secure for a native oyster farm. They also plan to talk about clearing droves of abandoned fishing gear from Culebra’s seabed. While they work, they’ll eat seafood mofongo—shrimp and plantain—because meetings here don’t just run on decisions. They run on community.

The villa pesquera itself carries a long history of being pulled apart by politics. For decades, it sat idle. Puerto Rico’s government shut down the facility in 2002 because of political infighting. loss of government funding. and conflict between local fishers. When Ayala and Gómez Andújar decided in 2021 to resurrect it. dozens of friends. neighbors. and local businesses donated time and labor to restore the dilapidated structure. They spent roughly four years organizing, fundraising, and securing permits before it reopened.

Last October, the fish market reopened to fanfare. Hundreds of people—on an island home to less than 2,000—showed up to celebrate. They ate, laughed, and danced. “We created what we dreamed of,” Ayala said.

The celebration hides the fact that rebuilding a place isn’t the same as fixing the system around it.

Culebra’s story connects to a bigger problem in Puerto Rico’s fisheries governance. In the early to mid-1960s. the Puerto Rican government established villas pesqueras as part of a push to modernize commercial fishing boats and docking facilities. turning informal fishing spots into regulated. communal spaces. In 1979. the centralized agency Corporación para el Desarrollo y Administración de los Recursos Marinos. Lacustres. y Fluviales—CODREMAR—was created to handle research. education. and conservation efforts related to commercial fishing.

By the early ’80s. the government began promoting “fisher associations. ” local groups tasked with controlling their own seafood sales and co-managing the villas pesqueras alongside municipalities. What followed, as researchers have found, is a record that’s difficult to piece together—but the outcomes were familiar. University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez social anthropologist Manuel Valdés-Pizzini found that fishers continued to struggle to keep control of landing centers because of political infighting and dwindling institutional support. the same dynamics that led to Culebra’s fishing village closing.

“There is a lot of politics in this,” Valdés-Pizzini said. “The landing center is just one piece of infrastructure in the whole fishery, culture, and society.”

In 1990, CODREMAR was dissolved. The Puerto Rican government said its oversight of the fishing sector was inefficient. and it divided core responsibilities between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. Today, experts and fishers describe governance as a patchwork spread across many agencies. Villas pesqueras are typically co-managed by local fishing associations, independent fishers or businesses, municipalities, and the Department of Agriculture. Some equipment—like storage lockers—is overseen by the Department of Agriculture. while fishers’ licenses. boat ramps. and other permitting approvals are largely regulated by the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.

The list of stakeholders runs farther. It includes the Puerto Rican Department of Economic Development and Commerce, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. the Caribbean Fishery Management Council. the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office. and the Puerto Rico Planning Board. among others.

For people trying to adapt to global warming, this complexity can feel like a trap—especially when climate change itself is shrinking options at sea.

A forthcoming analysis by The Nature Conservancy Puerto Rico. previewed exclusively by Grist and 9 Millones. found that the burdens of the current regulatory process as it relates to marine aquaculture “can be disproportionately high for small-scale producers.” Permits and authorizations are not only described as unwieldy for small fishers. but can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. For some—traditional shellfish farmers. in particular—the upfront and operating costs can be far greater than what peers in other parts of the U.S. face.

Puerto Rico’s fisheries sector is also structured differently from much of the mainland. It is primarily made up of small-scale, artisanal fishers rather than industrial operations. Fisheries account for a marginal slice of the archipelago’s economy. Commercial fishing falls within Puerto Rico’s agriculture. forestry. and fishing sector. which accounted for just 0.69 percent of Puerto Rico’s gross domestic product in 2024.

Yet in the most vulnerable island communities—where food is almost exclusively imported—poverty rates are more than double the national U.S. average, and resources are scarce. Expanding local fishing, many argue, can become a cornerstone for long-term food security and sovereignty.

A recent report found that 12 villas pesqueras contribute more than $3 million every year to Puerto Rico’s economy. and that contribution could grow. Fishers and advocates are pushing for a streamlined permitting system. better industry and cultural valuations for small-scale operators. and a centralized regulatory landscape overseen by one government office. Without those changes, the future remains uncertain.

Luis Alexis Rodríguez Cruz, a food systems researcher and science communicator who works with the Caribbean Agroecology Institute on fisheries, described the collision between institutions in a way that landed hard.

“Fishers are embedded in this complex web with the Department of Agriculture and Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. These different governmental institutions, they don’t seem to be talking to each other. There’s a disconnection,” Rodríguez Cruz said. “In Spanish we say, ‘Entre la espada y la pared’ — between the sword and the wall. It’s like. you want to do something. because this agency is requiring you to do [it]. often this other agency is not requiring it. or somewhat counters it.”.

And while distrust between fishers and the government deepens, climate change is pressing in from the other direction.

Rising seas are encroaching on Puerto Rico’s shorelines, wetlands, and coastal infrastructure. Erosion has been identified in more than a third of Puerto Rico’s beaches. In 2023. the Puerto Rican government declared a state of emergency over the issue. earmarking $105 million in federal funds to implement nearly two dozen measures to minimize effects. Late last month, Governor Jenniffer González-Colón declared another state of emergency over coastal erosion. On May 27—days before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season—she signed an executive order describing the “critical condition” of erosion as only having “accelerated” because of rising sea levels. storm surges. atmospheric phenomena. and the landscape vulnerability of several coastal communities.

Since 1901, the average ocean temperature around Puerto Rico has increased by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That warming has scrambled marine biodiversity: it has killed off coral reefs and seagrass. shifted which species are more abundant. and affected the quality of the catch. Still. for Puerto Rico’s fishing sector. the biggest climate stressor is the surging frequency of intensified hurricanes hitting the Caribbean.

In 2017. Hurricane Maria arrived as a Category 5 storm. devastating Puerto Rico and leaving parts of it without power for nearly a year. The hurricane also hit small fisheries hard. with an estimated $17.8 million in damaged gear. boats. and shoreside infrastructure. including villas pesqueras. After the storm. the Puerto Rican government aimed to rebuild with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NOAA. but delays became a defining feature of recovery. Aid was repeatedly delayed. Some fisherfolk didn’t receive federal support for years and were forced to operate in makeshift markets. Others rebuilt bit by bit on their own.

No official record currently exists for how many structures were lost. but a 2026 survey by the nonprofit Conservación ConCiencia found 41 villas pesqueras actively selling seafood. down from approximately 63 in the ’80s. The number of total active villages is unknown to the Puerto Rican government. The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources told Grist in an email it currently has 1. 646 “bonafide and licensed fishermen on record.” However. discrepancies appear between the number of fishers licensed and those represented in government data captured by multiple agencies.

In Ceiba. on Puerto Rico’s mainland. Beverly Román Figueroa and her partner Ernesto Correa Torres have been fighting over their villa pesquera since Maria hit. After the storm severely damaged Ceiba’s fishing hub. Román Figueroa said the mayor told her the municipality had been allocated a little over $124. 000 of Federal Emergency Management Agency aid for repairs. But she and Correa Torres visited the site—even as late as 2023 after a lengthy contract dispute over the villa pesquera’s management—and found little evidence that work had been done.

Photos and videos taken in March 2023 show destroyed pipes and waterlogged floors and walls, a largely unusable space.

“What they handed me was a neglected property,” Correa Torres said in Spanish. “This isn’t mine; this belongs to the people of Puerto Rico and to the fishermen.”

For months, they said their repair requests went unanswered by local and federal officials. Román Figueroa said the Department of Agriculture sent representatives for an on-site inspection at one point, but that visit resulted in “no real action.”

Tired of waiting and needing income. the duo invested more than $60. 000 of their own money to fix up the villa pesquera. They also worked with Conservación ConCiencia and Hispanic Federation to install solar panels on the fish market for cleaner. cheaper power. Three years later. they said the structure and its facilities—storage lockers. the boat ramp. and the floating dock—are accessible to local fishers. Their new restaurant, Pescaderia y Restaurante ANSI, is open four days a week. Román Figueroa cooks meals including sancocho de tiburón. a traditional stew made from the shark that Correa Torres hauls in.

“It was a disaster … but little by little, we got it back up and running,” Román Figueroa said in Spanish. “The government, she says, had no part in that. “Despite everything we have done at the villa, we have worked alone.”

That pattern—rebuilding while systems remain broken—shows up again in efforts to even document what’s happening on the ground.

Ariam Torres Cordero. an environmental planner and assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. visited at least 15 villas pesqueras in the last two years to map the current state of Puerto Rico’s fishing industry. Working with Valdés-Pizzini. he said he and colleagues are trying to change the fact that the government lacks an official account of the current conditions of the fishing hubs.

“You can see, already, the deterioration, even despite the fact that they were reconstructed less than eight years ago. You can already see the impacts of coastal erosion,” Torres Cordero said.

The governance structure, he added, has made fishers more vulnerable to threats rather than less. In the bungled rebuilding of the dozens of villas pesqueras destroyed by Maria. fisher communities across the archipelago reported they still can’t access federal aid to repair storm-ravaged facilities and equipment.

An audit published in January 2025 by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Commerce found Puerto Rico’s government distributed only around 7 percent of the $11.4 million in disaster assistance funds earmarked for fisheries since April 2020 and completed just 4 of 17 designated restoration projects.

Puerto Rico Secretary of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources Waldemar Quiles Pérez did not address requests for clarification on severe delays revealed in the audit or provide updates on aid disbursement. Quiles Pérez said in a written statement: “All of the fishing spaces around the Island are either privately owned or are administer[ed] by the Department of Agriculture.” The Department of Agriculture did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Torres Cordero also pointed out that even money that does arrive isn’t being used to rebuild with climate impacts in mind. He said the structures often return to designs from decades ago, which leaves communities vulnerable to the next round of destruction.

“With this in mind. he is trying to figure out how to minimize the risk of future storm and erosion damage while still allowing the fishing facilities to remain near the sea. ” the reporting states. adding that he believes the answer lies in reimagining parts of the villa pesquera design to make them more durable—and. where possible. mobile.

Torres Cordero said he is recruiting architecture. landscape. and social work students to create a new blueprint for a more “climate-proof” structure. “We need to decide, ‘What things do we need permanently placed in a location?. And then what things should be mobile?’ And then design around that,” he said.

A villa pesquera isn’t simple to move, he explained. Freezers and areas where fish are cleaned and prepared often require heavy equipment that would be too complex to move ahead of storms. But some elements—like fish markets or docks—could be designed to be mobile. He noted that Puerto Rico’s government tried a form of this after Maria by installing temporary floating docks in a handful of locations. but he said those have proven not to be very durable or functional.

The pilot project is centered on Vieques, another Puerto Rican island municipality with many traditional fishers. Torres Cordero said the work is in its infancy—it only started coming together last summer—and he hasn’t yet secured funding and capacity needed to move it forward. He also said several outside factors grounded the project before it could truly begin.

In September, he said, the fishers they were beginning to collaborate with in Vieques faced the deployment of U.S. troops to the island, a move the military considered strategic in tensions with Venezuela. Vieques, he said, still bears the environmental toll of decades of bombing by the U.S. Navy, including regular disposal of unknown contaminants in surrounding waters that polluted fishing stock and marine ecosystems.

Then in April, students at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras went on strike, calling for the resignation of university president Zayira Jordán Conde over controversial decisions involving widespread research and staffing cuts.

“All of that fell apart,” Torres Cordero said. “Right now, we are playing the waiting game.”

Culebra fishers, however, have tried to strengthen their own base as they wait for government rules to work.

They point to more than two dozen solar panels lining the villa pesquera’s roof. hurricane-proof windows found throughout the blue-and-white building. and a rainwater harvesting system that provides backup water. The measures are small but meant to matter. especially in a place where the next storm can turn supply chains into rubble.

After Maria, Ayala recalled, fishers mobilized to feed neighbors. In Culebra. he said. after the hurricane left the island without electricity for half a year. the local seafood supply chain collapsed entirely. With damaged gear. lack of power. and no reliable arrival of external food aid. Ayala said he organized an informal system: he collected fish from other fishermen. set up a makeshift area to clean the catch. and knocked on doors to sell directly to residents.

That grassroots push, he said, underscored the need for resilience—and catalyzed the formation of the fishing association and the restoration of their home base, the villa pesquera.

In 2020, Gómez Andújar and local environmental scientist Megan Considine set out to create another pillar of that vision: the only permitted oyster farm in Puerto Rico.

“Climate change is, of course, this unpredictable threat. And it’s chronic, and it’s there,” Gómez Andújar said. “To a certain extent, we need to flow with it. We need to adapt. We need to mitigate.”

While the oyster farm is currently grant-funded with only research permits. local fishers like Ayala view farming native shellfish as a way to spark the next generation’s interest in fishing and diversify the seafood supply chain operating out of Culebra’s villa pesquera. But to keep the project running through the next few years, the farm needs to commercialize.

“And then,” the reporting turns, “everything was moving in the right direction—until late last month.”

At that point, Gómez Andújar said, much of the farm’s federal compliance suddenly hinged on an Army Corps of Engineers permit at risk of expiring. Rather than chance violations, they decided to temporarily shut down roughly half their operations while awaiting clearance.

“It’s demoralizing,” Gómez Andújar said. “The main message, really, is we’re doing the best we can to do everything right, and it’s still very, very, very hard.”

After yearslong effort to restore Culebra’s fishing village, Gómez Andújar and Ayala say they’re again buried under bureaucracy—only now the urgency is tied to time-limited permits.

“We show people how to live from the ocean, how to grow food from the ocean,” Ayala said. “And fishing represents so much more to Ayala than just a job—it’s the foundation of Puerto Rico’s food-sovereign, climate-resilient future. ‘And the government is the biggest barrier.’”

Filmmaker Nelson Vega Oliveras contributed reporting. 9 Millones’ Laura M. Quintero contributed editing.

Puerto Rico Culebra small-scale fishing villas pesqueras climate change coastal erosion Hurricane Maria permits Army Corps of Engineers oyster farm marine aquaculture food security community resilience