Reasons to Be Cheerful reports on how fishers and residents in Culebra, Puerto Rico have restored a local fishing center and transformed it into a hub for fresh seafood, cultural connection, and hands-on fisheries research.

With strong local leadership and volunteer labor, the Asociación de Pescadores de Culebra reopened a fish market, created a research and learning space for fisher-led science, and built a system that offers affordable seafood, trains new fishers, collects ecological data, and sets community-based conservation rules.

Led by fishers Nico Gómez-Andújar and Tomás Ayala, the collaborative effort is restoring local food access, improving island livelihoods, and showing how community organizing and science can work together to protect coastal ecosystems.

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This story is a collaboration between Reasons to be Cheerful and Local Catch Network.

Photo: The newly opened fish market at the villa. Photo courtesy of Nicolás Gómez-Andújar.