Potential Fishing Communities in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida: An effort in baseline profiling and mapping

This description of potential fishing communities for the U.S. South Atlantic coast includes a compilation of various social indicators that are relevant to fishing, fishermen and fishing communities. These indicators provide baseline information from which assumptions about social impacts might be made regarding future regulatory actions. A number of data sources were used to assemble community profiles, including: the U.S. Census Bureau Decennial census and zip code business patterns; the federal permit system and state permit system. These profiles were bolstered by field visits in many of these communities to confirm the presence of fishing related activity and to interview key informants about the interconnectedness of that activity to the larger economy and culture of the community. This was accomplished using what is called rapid assessment. While this methodology is no substitute for the more in-depth ethnographic methods commonly used by anthropologists in community studies, it was all that was possible under the budgetary constraints of this research. In addition, these data were compiled into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to facilitate data mapping and amalgamation with other GIS data. 2018 NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) SER (Southeast Region) Submitted Public Domain 1861