A new OKEANOS research project will study five resources important to Azorean fisheries—blackspot seabream, splendid alfonsino, red bream, blue jack mackerel and rays. With €332,190 in funding and work continuing through March 2028, FISH4MSY seeks something fundamental to the future of fishing: better knowledge of what the ocean can sustainably provide.

The sea has always given the Azores food, work and identity, but it has never offered certainty. Beneath the surface, fish populations grow, migrate, reproduce and decline according to biological rhythms that fishing communities cannot fully see. Yet every year governments must transform that invisible reality into something remarkably precise: numbers—quotas, limits, kilograms and allowable catches.

A new scientific project led by OKEANOS – Institute of Marine Sciences intends to make those numbers better informed. The project, FISH4MSY – “Status of Fishery Resources and Biodiversity Restoration in the Azores,” began on April 1, 2026, and runs until March 31, 2028. Led by researcher Régis Vinicius Souza Santos, it will concentrate on several resources relevant to Azorean fisheries: blackspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo), splendid alfonsino (Beryx splendens), red bream (Beryx decadactylus), blue jack mackerel (Trachurus picturatus) and rays. Its €332,190 budget is financed 70 percent through MAR 2030 (€232,533) and 30 percent through the Azorean PRO-SCIENTIA program (€99,657).

From Scientific Evidence to Fishing Limits

The project’s importance lies in the difficult territory between biology and economics.

Researchers will integrate historical monitoring and fisheries data collected under the European Union Data Collection Framework and use population-assessment models to examine fishing pressure, stock evolution and possible management scenarios.

The research can ultimately contribute to the scientific knowledge used by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). But science does not itself establish fishing quotas. ICES provides advice; Total Allowable Catches and quotas are subsequently determined through European political and regulatory processes, followed, where applicable, by national and regional allocation.

That distinction is essential. FISH4MSY is not a project designed to justify either larger or smaller catches. Its purpose is to determine more accurately what level of exploitation the resource can biologically sustain. Sometimes better science may support greater catches. Sometimes it may demonstrate that restraint is necessary.

The Blackspot Seabream Test

Few examples illustrate the relationship between science and livelihoods more clearly than blackspot seabream, one of the most consequential managed fisheries in the Azores. For 2026, ICES advised that catches in Subarea 10—the Azorean grounds—should not exceed 395 tonnes under the Maximum Sustainable Yield approach. The European Union subsequently established a Total Allowable Catch of 382 tonnes, of which 376 tonnes were allocated to Portugal.

Within the Azores, the Regional Government then distributes fishing opportunities among the nine islands and licensed local and coastal vessels, using fishing history among the criteria. Behind every one of these figures lies an attempt to answer a deceptively difficult question: how much can be removed from the sea without diminishing its capacity to replenish itself? FISH4MSY should help improve knowledge of biomass, recruitment, fishing mortality and the capacity of stocks to recover—information that may eventually make future scientific advice more precise.

Two Species Beneath One Management Ceiling

The project may prove particularly useful for splendid alfonsino and red bream, two different species that are grouped for European management purposes under Beryx spp. For 2026, the European TAC for Beryx spp. across a broad area of the Northeast Atlantic is 179 tonnes, with 118 tonnes allocated to Portugal. The quota is restricted to bycatch rather than directed fishing.

The Azores are particularly important within this fishery: vessels registered in the Region receive 85 percent of Portugal’s Beryx quota under the current national distribution formula. Regional rules further restrict catches by vessel and trip so that available fishing opportunities are not exhausted prematurely.

Better scientific understanding of the two species individually could therefore become valuable. If researchers can more accurately distinguish their abundance, population trajectories and response to fishing pressure, future managers will have stronger evidence with which to consider whether treating them together continues to reflect their biological realities.

Reducing Uncertainty Beneath the Water

Blue jack mackerel provides another example. ICES has recommended, under the precautionary approach, catches of no more than 702 tonnes annually in the Azorean grounds for 2025 and 2026. That figure is scientific advice and should not automatically be confused with an EU quota allocated specifically to the Azorean fleet.

The distinction matters because fisheries management is constructed through several layers: observation at sea, scientific modeling, international advice, European decisions, Portuguese allocations and finally regional rules governing vessels and catches. FISH4MSY enters near the beginning of that chain. Its most valuable product may therefore be neither fish nor quota, but less uncertainty.

For an Azorean fleet dependent upon demersal and deep-water species and operating within annual, quarterly and per-trip restrictions, better information can have direct economic consequences. Overestimating a stock can threaten tomorrow’s fishery. Underestimating one can unnecessarily restrict today’s livelihood. Between those two risks lies the difficult territory of sustainable fishing. And that is where science must work.

For centuries, Azorean fishermen learned to read the sea from winds, currents, seasons and experience. Today another kind of reading is taking place—in datasets, population models and decades of observations. The purpose, however, remains remarkably similar: to understand what lies beneath the surface well enough to know what can be taken today without emptying tomorrow.

Based on a story in Diário dos Açores-Paulo Viveiros, director. Photos from DA.