This data was collected under National Fish & Wildlife Foundation Grant 0318.20.069532 awarded to The Nature Conservancy's U.S. Virgin Islands division. The project is titled 'Strengthening Coastal Resilience through Coral Reef Restoration (VI)'. The data contributes to ecological goal-based metrics outlined in the project's Implentation and Monitoring Plan. More specifically, this data was collected to measure the following metrics related to fish communities within defined reef habitats (reef crest and forereef) within and around the 50 acre restoration site: fish species richness, fish species diversity, fish species evenness, fish biomass by trophic group.

This data was collected within the East End Marine Park on the northeastern side of the island of St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands. For each timepoint, data was collected at 12 random points (6 points in each habitat type) within the restoration area (restore sites) and 6 random points (3 points in each reef type) outside of the restoration area (control sites).

Data was collected between 2022 and 2025. Timepoints represent pre-restoration conditions (2022), and post-restoration conditions (2024 and 2025).

Data was collected using the methodologies described in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 'National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) Reef Visual Census (RVC) Fish Survey Protocols U.S. Atlantic: Florida, Flower Garden Banks, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands 2022' authored by the Coral Reef Conservation Program (U.S.) (https://doi.org/10.25923/1baa-5g44)