The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) requested that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC), through the Board on Science and Technology for Research and Development (BOSTID),". ..conduct a peer review of aquacultural, maricultural and marine research for early commercial exploitation in the Eastern Caribbean, with emphasis on the commercial feasibility of the Caribbean crab species Mithrax spinsiossimus." An AID research grant to the Smithsonian Institution for its marine Systems Laboratory had supported work on this project for 18 months of a 24-month contract term at the time of the review in February 1988. That two year grant was a continuation of research effort by the MSL that had begun in September 1983.