Horta 13 08 2019
By: Luis Roque
On the 10th of August the local newspapers of the Azores published the news of the arrest of an 1119lb blue marlin landed by a vessel from the city of Horta claiming the quota of this species has been fully caught since 00:00 hours. from April 8th.
There are several questions that emerge from these news:
1 - Why is there no information available to the public on blue marlin fishing effort?
2 - Knowing the lack of market or consumption of this species in Europe, who catches blue marlin and for what?
Apparently the catch of marlin is associated with the longline targeting for swordfish in international waters. However, independent sources claim that it is very rare for longliners to by-catch this species and these numbers have been filled and manipulated to increase the swordfish landings. Another possibility is the exchange of quotas by the Portuguese authorities with other countries, ignoring the need for the sport fishing sector to have some remaining quota in order to be able to exceptionally capture and land some large specimens as trophy in national waters during the summer. Whatever the case, this situation demonstrates and denounces a total lack of consultation with the communities that have been exploiting this resource for many years with excellent conservation practices and which can directly and indirectly represent a few million euros in the tourism sector.
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