Public sessions on Faial and Pico are revisiting a remarkable chapter of Portuguese maritime history: the contribution of Portuguese—and particularly Azorean—fishermen to the development of the Eastern Pacific tuna fishery. Bringing together scientists, fishermen, shipowners, museum specialists and members of the California diaspora, the initiative reconnects the islands with a maritime legacy carried across oceans.
The history of Azorean emigration was never written exclusively on land. It was also written on decks, in engine rooms, around bait tanks and across distant fishing grounds where islanders transformed knowledge inherited from the Atlantic into livelihoods in another ocean. On September 7 and 8, Faial and Pico are hosting two public sessions devoted to recovering part of that history through the project “Tribute to the Portuguese Contribution to Tuna Fishing in the Eastern Pacific,” supported by the Regional Secretariat for Parliamentary Affairs and Communities and the Regional Secretariat for the Sea and Fisheries.
The initiative seeks particularly to recognize the role of Azorean fishermen in the development of tuna fishing in the Eastern Pacific while strengthening connections among the Azores, their diaspora and the international scientific community. It forms part of a broader project on Portuguese maritime history that was presented in Lisbon on September 1 as a parallel event to the 104th meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. Following the Azorean sessions, the project is also expected to reach Madeira and, significantly, San Diego, California—a city deeply connected with the Portuguese-American history of Pacific tuna fishing.
The first Azorean gathering, held September 7 at the João José da Graça Public Library and Regional Archive in Horta, approaches the subject primarily through science. Participants include Andreia Braga Henriques, Regional Director for Fisheries; Alexandre Aires-da-Silva, Coordinator of Scientific Research at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission in La Jolla, California; Idalmiro da Rosa, Honorary Consul of Portugal in San Diego; and Ricardo da Rosa, owner of the Pacific Princess and vice-president of United Portuguese SES, Inc. They are joined by Miguel Machete, coordinator of the Azores Fisheries Observation Program; University of the Azores oceanographer Ana Martins; and Gui Menezes, director of the OKEANOS Institute for Marine Sciences Research, together with representatives of Azorean fishing organizations.
The second session, on September 8 at the Whalers Museum in Lajes do Pico, shifts the emphasis toward history and memory. José Andrade, Regional Director for Communities, joins Pico Museum director Manuel Costa, businessman Rúben Alves, Alexandre Aires-da-Silva, Idalmiro da Rosa and Ricardo da Rosa. The location itself carries symbolic force. Pico is an island where maritime labor remains deeply inscribed in collective memory, and the Whalers Museum provides an especially appropriate setting for examining how Azorean knowledge and courage migrated from one maritime economy into another.
The project is coordinated by Idalmiro da Rosa, Alexandre Aires-da-Silva and Kenny Alameda, president of Clipper Oil Marine Fuels in San Diego. Their involvement illustrates one of the initiative’s most compelling dimensions: this is not simply an Azorean story or a California story. It belongs to the historical space between them. The fishermen who crossed the Atlantic carried techniques, habits of work, community networks and an intimate familiarity with the sea into the Pacific world. Their descendants became part of the Portuguese-American communities of California while remaining connected, culturally and emotionally, to the islands from which that maritime tradition originated.
Both sessions include public discussion, bringing researchers and institutional representatives into conversation with fishing communities, diaspora voices and specialists. That dialogue is important because maritime history cannot be reconstructed entirely through official documents or statistics. Much of it survives through family stories, photographs, vessels, personal recollections and the accumulated knowledge of men and women whose lives were shaped by fishing but whose names rarely entered conventional historical narratives.
There is also a meaningful continuity between past and present. Tuna fishing today is increasingly discussed through science, stock assessment, sustainability and international management. Bringing historical experience into conversation with contemporary fisheries research allows the project to do more than commemorate Portuguese achievement. It can demonstrate how communities that once helped build an industry can also participate in understanding its future.
For generations of Azoreans, emigration meant leaving one island but not necessarily leaving the sea. Many crossed the Atlantic only to encounter another ocean, another horizon and another fishing ground. In the Eastern Pacific, particularly along the California coast and beyond, they helped write a chapter of Portuguese maritime history far from the volcanic shores where many of their journeys began.
The sessions in Horta and Lajes do Pico bring that chapter home. They remind us that the history of the Azorean diaspora cannot be measured only by the places where emigrants settled. It must also be traced across the waters they crossed and worked. Somewhere between the Azores and San Diego lies an immense geography of memory—and in that geography, the Portuguese contribution to the Pacific tuna fishery deserves to be remembered, studied and passed on.
In Novidades – the islands and the diaspora – Bruma Publications-PBBI, Fresno State.