Buck Island Reef National Monument

Indigenous peoples

By about A.D. 400, according to the park’s history page, Amerindians living on St. Croix, who had come into the region through the Lesser Antilles from the lower Orinoco River and the Guyana coast, began to visit Buck Island to fish, catch lobsters and land crabs, gather conch and possibly collect turtle and bird eggs. They camped in the beach forest and left behind pottery and hearths. Charcoal and shell from hearths at West Beach have given two calibrated radiocarbon ranges, A.D. 410–600 and 510–700, and the pottery found on the island runs from Late Saladoid through Ostionoid styles. The 2017 foundation document reports that eroding shorelines are causing the loss of important archeological sites, among them the north shore Amerindian site. [3] [2] [4]

Slavery

Johann Diedrich (the park’s history page spells it Deidrich), Christiansted’s town clerk, controlled Buck Island from 1754 to 1773; between six and twelve enslaved Africans lived there at a time during his tenure, and three were listed in 1772. An 1841 Danish tax list names enslaved Africans there. Island-wide, the 2012 plan reports, enslaved people were more than 90 percent of St. Croix’s population before 1800, and in 1812 its 175 sugar plantations held 26,000 enslaved people. Emancipation came in 1848. [3] [4]

The 2001 proclamation records two slave ships under Liverpool captains wrecked in the waters it added: the Mary in March 1797, with 240 enslaved people, and the General Abercrombie in March 1803, with 339; both groups were brought to Christiansted. Such wrecks are rare in U.S. waters, the proclamation notes, and remnants lie in the monument. The Slave Wrecks Project, an NPS–Smithsonian partnership with universities, has drawn attention to them, the foundation document says. [2] [5]

Climate & environment

The 2004 brochure warned that coral reefs worldwide are fast disappearing and that biologists see their plight as a planetary danger signal. The 2017 foundation document gives Buck Island figures: in the 1960s, 70 percent of corals were considered healthy; in the 1970s white band disease left only 5 to 10 percent of the elkhorn coral alive; and monitoring from the 1990s to 2016 found 2 to 5 percent live cover on two reefs. It counts bleaching, rising seas and ocean acidification among the threats and says climate change is likely to worsen the threat from storms. [2] [1]

A 2023 study led by U.S. Geological Survey scientists, with Park Service co-authors, found bioerosion dominant at 91 percent of reef sites surveyed in 2016, but concluded that significant elkhorn coral restoration, if successful, could let the reef crest keep pace with the roughly half-meter of sea-level rise expected by 2100 with moderate emissions cuts. [2] [6]