Scientific assessment finds most priority coastal resources in the Azores under intensive exploitation or overexploitation, while researchers call for stricter management, stronger enforcement and continuous monitoring
The sea has always been one of the great promises of the Azores. It feeds families, sustains communities, shapes landscapes and identities, and provides livelihoods that have crossed generations. But the sea is not inexhaustible, and a new scientific assessment of coastal fishery resources offers a warning that should be read not only by fishermen and scientists, but by everyone concerned with the economic and environmental future of the archipelago. Of the 18 priority coastal species examined, seven are classified as overexploited or intensively exploited, while 15 are considered vulnerable when the most conservative susceptibility criterion is applied.
The findings are contained in the report “Avaliação de Recursos Pesqueiros Costeiros,” prepared by researchers from OKEANOS and IMAR as part of the MoniCO program and delivered to the Regional Government in July. Based principally on data from 2021 to 2025, complemented by historical series, the assessment does not describe a uniform ecological crisis affecting every species in precisely the same way. What it does reveal is perhaps more important: a coastal ecosystem in which pressure is widespread, scientific information remains incomplete for several resources, and delaying precautionary management could make future recovery considerably more difficult.
Among the species evaluated, ray and white seabream are classified as overexploited, while barracuda, red hogfish, red porgy, forkbeard and parrotfish are considered intensively exploited. Only triggerfish and black scorpionfish appear close to levels regarded as sustainable according to maximum sustainable yield criteria. For nine other species, the available information remains inconclusive or insufficient for a robust stock assessment.
That last finding deserves particular attention. In fisheries management, uncertainty should not automatically be interpreted as reassurance. Not knowing that a resource is declining is fundamentally different from knowing that it is healthy. When biological parameters are outdated or unavailable, when systematic monitoring has gaps and when some species cannot even be subjected to particular stock-assessment models because the necessary data do not exist, uncertainty itself becomes part of the risk.
The report identifies five species—cação, badejo, mero, garoupa and bicuda—as having high vulnerability, with another seven classified at a moderate level. It also detects frequent declines in abundance indicators derived from underwater visual censuses and LPUE data, although other indicators present more mixed results. Standardized CPUE, for example, has increased for some species, including parrotfish, ray, triggerfish and dogfish, while decreasing for others, such as white seabream, grouper, red porgy and black scorpionfish. The scientists consequently urge caution in interpreting individual indicators and emphasize the importance of maintaining long-term observation.
This complexity is precisely why fisheries policy cannot be reduced to a contest between those who want to fish and those who want to conserve. Sustainable fishing depends upon conservation. Conservation that ignores the social and economic realities of fishing communities is equally incomplete. The challenge is to preserve the resource so that harvesting it remains possible—not merely next season, but twenty and fifty years from now.
Perhaps nowhere is this tension more visible than in the case of the lapa-brava.
The history of this emblematic resource already contains a warning from the past. Its populations collapsed during the 1980s and 1990s, leading to harvesting reserves, size restrictions, daily catch limits and a closed season. Yet independent systematic monitoring was subsequently interrupted for approximately two decades and resumed only in 2022. Between that year and 2025, the scientific assessment found overall stability among the islands, but with one significant exception: the biomass recorded in Flores declined statistically significantly.
The Flores result is particularly striking because the island had recorded the archipelago’s highest biomass and average size in 2022. By 2025, its biomass had fallen toward levels observed in Graciosa, Terceira and São Miguel, islands previously classified as having an unfavorable conservation status for the species. The report therefore calls for particular attention to what happens next in Flores.
At the same time, another force has entered the equation: value.
The average first-sale price of lapa-brava, which had remained approximately between nine and 11 euros per kilogram from 2021 through 2024, rose sharply in 2025 to around 17 to 18 euros per kilogram and exceeded 20 euros in some circumstances. Total auction value increased by approximately 90 percent in only one year, from €129,869 in 2024 to €246,386 in 2025. The report associates this appreciation with increasing regional and external demand, including exports to Madeira, where harvesting had been prohibited to allow the resource to recover.
Economically, higher prices can appear to be excellent news. Ecologically, however, they can produce precisely the opposite incentive. The more valuable a vulnerable resource becomes, the greater the temptation to increase harvesting pressure. Researchers consequently warn of increased risks of illegal fishing, underreporting and commercialization outside official channels, and consider the possibility of a new cycle of overfishing. They recommend more conservative catch limits, greater traceability, stronger enforcement and continued monitoring.
There is an uncomfortable lesson here. A resource can become more valuable precisely as it becomes more vulnerable. Markets measure scarcity through price; ecosystems measure it through disappearance. By the time the two signals become unmistakably aligned, intervention may already be far more difficult and costly.
The assessment also raises questions about the effectiveness of protection itself. In the case of lapa-brava, researchers found no statistically significant difference between protected and unprotected areas at the regional scale. This does not necessarily mean that reserves are useless. Rather, the findings suggest that declaring an area protected is not sufficient by itself. Accessibility, human pressure and enforcement capacity appear to influence whether protection produces measurable results.
A protected area without adequate surveillance can become little more than a boundary drawn on a map.
The scientific gaps identified in the report are equally important. Biological parameters such as growth, maturity, natural mortality and selectivity remain outdated or unavailable for several species. Information is particularly limited for badejo and peixe-cão, while insufficient data prevented the application of some stock-assessment models to cavaco, lagosta, lapa-brava, badejo, írio, mero and serra. Researchers therefore recommend preserving historical time series, expanding fishery-independent assessments, strengthening sampling and beginning more systematic monitoring of recreational fishing.
And the recommendations go considerably further than additional research.
The report proposes prohibiting catches of some of the highest-risk species, including badejo and peixe-cão; reducing quotas for cação, raia and veja; establishing quotas for other species presenting high or moderate risk; introducing a maximum capture size and closed season for mero; and reducing harvesting limits for lapa-brava. It also recommends species- or functional-group-specific management plans adapted to the circumstances of individual islands, together with stronger control of both professional and recreational fishing.
That reference to individual islands may be among the report’s most consequential recommendations. The Azores are one archipelago, but they are not one uniform marine territory. Fishing pressure, accessibility, population, fleet characteristics, commercial demand and ecological conditions vary from island to island. Effective management may therefore require moving beyond regional averages toward policies sufficiently flexible to respond to the biological realities of each resource and the socioeconomic circumstances of each island.
The Regional Government, responding to a request from the Left Bloc that led to disclosure of the scientific report, says it is aware of the concerns expressed by harvesters in Flores and considers the existing management regime appropriate at present. Ten professional licenses remain allocated to the island in 2026. Monitoring was undertaken in May 2025 and again in July 2026 through the COLAPA-3D project, with the latest data still being processed. The information supplied also indicates that no enforcement actions were recorded in 2024 or 2025, while monitoring and management of the resource continue.
This is where science and public policy must meet. Scientific reports should not become documents that are commissioned, delivered and eventually placed on shelves. Nor should every scientific recommendation automatically be transformed into policy without consideration of social consequences. Science identifies risks and possibilities; democratic government must decide how to respond to them. But when evidence repeatedly indicates vulnerability, intensive exploitation and declining abundance, choosing not to act is itself a policy decision.
For fishing communities, stricter measures can carry immediate economic consequences. That reality cannot be dismissed. If society asks fishermen and harvesters to reduce catches today in order to preserve resources tomorrow, public policy must also consider how those communities will endure the transition. Conservation and social justice cannot be separated in small island economies where a restriction written into regulation may translate directly into income lost by a household.
Yet the alternative is more severe. The collapse of a resource does not protect employment. It eliminates it.
The deeper meaning of this report therefore extends beyond seven species classified as intensively exploited or overexploited. It asks what kind of relationship the Azores intend to maintain with the ocean that surrounds them. For centuries, necessity encouraged island communities to think of the sea primarily in terms of what could be taken from it. The twenty-first century requires another understanding: what we take from the sea depends ultimately upon what we are willing to leave within it.
Fifty years from now, the success of Azorean fisheries policy will not be measured by how many tons were landed in 2026. It will be measured by whether there are still healthy stocks to fish, communities able to live from them, and younger generations willing to inherit both the profession and the sea upon which it depends.
The warning contained in this scientific assessment is therefore not an argument against fishing. It is an argument for its future. Becasue the most important catch is not necessarily the one brought ashore today. It may be the one we make possible tomorrow.
Based on a story in Diário Insular-Photos from DI and Blue Azores.