The future of fisheries depends on efficient management of available natural and human resources. Fishing quotas help to ensure that the fish does not run out and, with information from the scientific community of the European Union, there is a selectivity in the species that are in greater quantity and developed to be caught. This is a vision that Fátima Lopes found in a new generation of shipowners, including Fábio Coentrão. Internationally known for his football career, the former player, son of fishermen and born in Caxinas, the largest fishing community in Portugal, knew that when he finished his career on the pitches, he wanted to build a new professional life at sea.
Fátima Lopes' journey to the north coast of Portugal, in particular to the city of Vila do Conde and the fishing center of the emblematic Caxinas, is centered on the desire to know and reveal how this great region and community is adapting and thinking about the future of professionals dedicated to the sea. It is one of the regions whose importance dates back to the Portuguese maritime expansion, when navigators and the best skills for shipbuilding were sought there. The modernization of fleets is urgent not only to make fishing attractive for new generations, but also more sustainable. The visit to Matosinhos and Caxinas shows how shipowners, with the support of the Mar 2020 Program, are renewing vessels and providing them with sophisticated equipment for selective capture and to improve the safety and work of fishermen. Fábio Coentrão shares his experience and dreams in this new adventure in the fishing sector, which, like Manuel Marques, president of Associação de Armadores do Norte, says: “it is a paid lifestyle”. It is at the Matosinhos docks that another trip to the world of the economy of the sea begins and it is from there that Fátima Lopes will leave to witness a new art of fishing, this time the siege, which, according to INE, in 2020, registered the highest percentage of registered fishermen in the northern region of the country. The northern region itself continues to have the highest rate of registered fishermen in Portugal, with 29.7%. It's worth climbing on board for another episode and see how you can change for the better by making fishing and the sea a way of life after all!
29 сен 2024
