The marine biologist argues that the archipelago’s greatest problem is not simply how much fish is being landed today, but how much life the ocean will still be capable of producing tomorrow

There are places where the sea is landscape. In the Azores, it is something considerably more profound: livelihood, inheritance, mythology, food, economy and one of the oldest vocabularies through which islanders have understood themselves. But an ocean can appear immense and still be vulnerable. Its horizon may suggest infinity while the ecosystems beneath it obey limits that no sentiment, political promise or economic necessity can repeal.

That contradiction lies at the heart of marine biologist João Pedro Barreiros’s warning about the future of Azorean fisheries: “The problem is not only how much fish is caught; it is knowing how much fish the sea is still capable of producing.” It is a deceptively simple sentence. Yet within it lies an entire philosophy of stewardship.

Barreiros cautions against interpreting recent declines in fish-auction landings as direct proof of ecological catastrophe. Landings measure what fishermen catch and bring ashore, not the biomass actually living beneath the surface. Weather, fishing effort, market prices, targeted species and other variables all influence those numbers. Indeed, the 2026 statistics themselves reveal complexity: landings increased year-on-year in May, fell 16.7 percent in June, while the second quarter as a whole still registered an 8.3 percent increase.

The more troubling story, therefore, is larger than the statistics of any single month. It is the accumulated pressure of decades.

An Ocean Rich in Species Is Not Necessarily Rich in Fish

Perhaps the most important distinction Barreiros makes is between biodiversity and abundance.

The Azores possess an extraordinarily rich fish fauna, but that biological diversity can create an illusion of inexhaustible wealth. An ocean containing many species does not necessarily contain large populations of those species. The archipelago has no continental shelf and exists within a particular oceanic ecology whose productive capacity cannot simply be compared with that of vast continental fishing grounds.

What scientists must therefore observe is not merely the tonnage arriving at auction but the architecture of marine populations: the presence of large adults, the balance between predators and prey, the geographical distribution of species and the reproductive strength of stocks.

And here Barreiros identifies an especially disturbing signal: the disappearance of larger animals.

When mature fish become increasingly uncommon and catches are dominated by smaller individuals, something fundamental is changing. The ocean may still contain fish, but its biological capital—the great reproductive animals capable of sustaining future generations—is being diminished.

For Barreiros, this is hardly a new revelation. Scientists have issued warnings for twenty or thirty years. The failure has not primarily been one of knowledge; it has been the inability—or unwillingness—to transform scientific knowledge into sufficiently early, coherent and enduring public policy.

A Protected Ocean Must Be More Than a Colored Map

The expansion of marine protected areas offers hope, but Barreiros resists the comforting arithmetic by which success is measured simply in square kilometers.

“A protected area drawn on a map does not recover a stock,” he argues. Protection matters only when it safeguards the right ecological areas, against the appropriate pressures, with effective rules, meaningful enforcement and sufficient time for biological recovery. Otherwise, governments may celebrate the percentage of ocean officially protected while biomass, reproductive adults and ecosystem integrity continue to decline.

The distinction is crucial. The measure of conservation cannot ultimately be how much sea has been declared protected. It must be how much living sea has been restored. Marine reserves can therefore be extraordinarily valuable, Barreiros insists, but they must belong to a larger fisheries policy rather than substitute for one.

The Sea Itself Is Changing

There is another, still more unsettling dimension. The problem is no longer simply what humans remove from the ocean. It is also what is happening to the ecological house in which marine species live.

Barreiros points to the invasive brown alga Rugulopteryx okamurae, detected in the Azores in 2019 and subsequently expanded across the archipelago. Scientists have already documented profound alterations in benthic communities where it has become established. It would be premature, he emphasizes, to attribute declines in commercial catches directly to the alga. But it would be equally irresponsible to disregard the possibility that changing habitats will eventually alter the resources those habitats sustain.

This changes the intellectual framework of fisheries policy.

Recovering fish populations can no longer mean simply reducing catches and waiting for yesterday’s ocean to return. If habitats themselves have changed, ecological recovery becomes considerably more complicated. The objective must therefore be not merely stock recovery but ecosystem recovery.

Who Is the Fish For?

Then comes the question familiar around Azorean tables: if fish comes from these islands, why is some of it increasingly difficult for islanders themselves to afford? Tourism, exports and local consumption compete within the same limited biological economy. Yet Barreiros cautions against confusing commercial distribution with conservation.

If there is insufficient fish, he argues, the fundamental problem is not initially the tourist, exporter or resident consumer. The fundamental problem is that there is insufficient fish. Recovery must therefore come first.

After that, however, there is a legitimate conversation about food sovereignty. The Azores must ask whether it is desirable for locally harvested species to become economically inaccessible to the people who inhabit the islands. Barreiros advocates diversification—greater use of other species, different culinary preparations and less dependence upon a small group of commercially prestigious fish, particularly the largest specimens.

There is an uncomfortable biological truth beneath the entire debate: the Azores cannot indefinitely maximize catches, exports, tourist consumption and inexpensive availability for residents simultaneously. As Barreiros puts it with almost mathematical finality:

The Twenty-Year Question

Perhaps the most consequential element of Barreiros’s argument is not scientific but temporal.

Politics ordinarily lives by budgets, legislatures, elections and immediate pressures. The sea lives by different calendars: maturation, spawning, recruitment, ecological succession and generations.

A responsible fisheries policy must therefore possess the courage to think beyond the next season.

That means reducing excessive fishing mortality, protecting large reproductive individuals, controlling fishing effort, combating illegal catches, improving monitoring and establishing catch limits grounded in the biology of individual species. It also means adaptive management: when indicators improve, policy can adjust; when they deteriorate, action must come quickly.

“We cannot wait for collapse before we begin to manage,” Barreiros warns. And perhaps that is the sentence the Azores most urgently need to hear.

For centuries, islanders learned that survival depended upon reading the sea: its winds, currents, tempests, migrations and silences. The twenty-first century demands another form of seamanship—the ability to read scientific evidence before absence becomes visible to everyone.

The question is therefore no longer merely how many tons can be landed this year. It is whether a child born today will reach adulthood beside an ocean still capable of sustaining the fisheries that helped make these islands what they are.

Barreiros believes the knowledge and tools already exist. What has too often been absent is continuity—and, at decisive moments, political courage. The Azores have always understood that one does not command the Atlantic. One learns to live within its terms.

And perhaps the most important inheritance this generation can leave the next will not be another story about how abundant the sea once was, but something infinitely more valuable: a sea still alive enough for those who come after us to make stories of their own.

Based on an interview published in Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director. Phots from DI.