British Virgin Islands

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Spearfishing is illegal in the British Virgin Islands. The core prohibition is Fisheries Act 1997 (No. 4 of 1997) s.50(1) (no speargun/SCUBA/explosive/poison for fishing), reinforced by the Fisheries Regulations 2003 and the official Conservation and Fisheries Department recreational fishing guide. The official Government notice attributes the maximum fine of USD 15,000 to s.63(a) and a presumption-of-intent rule to s.50(2); however the consolidated Fisheries Act 1997 could not be retrieved (it is not yet published on the official Virgin Islands Laws Online portal, laws.gov.vg, and is not on FAOLEX), so the verbatim wording of s.50(2) and s.63 could not be confirmed. To avoid presenting paraphrase as statute, the previous s.50(2) and s.63(a) law_texts entries (which were summaries, not quotes) were removed; their substance is retained in the legal_status summary with explicit attribution to the official notice. The Act number (No. 4 of 1997) is corroborated by the Fisheries (Fishing Priority Areas and Protected Areas) Order, 2011 (SI 2011 No. 69), whose verbatim section 4 is now cited from FAOLEX as the in-force legal basis for the protected-area fishing ban; FAOLEX separately mislabels the Act as 'No. 18 of 1997'. The Food Security and Sustainability Act, 2022, which would permit spearfishing (without SCUBA), received the Governor's assent but had NOT been brought into force by Gazette notice as of February 2025, with supporting regulations still in drafting; until commencement, spearfishing remains prohibited. Permitted recreational fishing is rod/hand-line pleasure fishing (30 lbs per boat personal-consumption cap) and catch-and-release sport fishing; both require a licence. 14 Fisheries Protected Areas (MPAs) ban all activity except snorkeling (confirmed against both the recreational guide and the 2011 Order). Only 2 MPAs (Horse Shoe Reef/Anegada area, Dead Chest) carry coordinates, and those are approximate centroids derived from gazetteer data, not from the legal instrument; remaining MPAs lack precise published coordinates and are left without coordinates to avoid fabrication. Confidence is medium: the legal status (prohibited) is well-sourced from official government material, but two penalty/presumption provisions rest on an official press notice's paraphrase rather than the verifiable consolidated statute.