The Regional Secretary for the Sea, Science and Technology stated in Ponta Delgada that "we are not facing any serious threat to the conservation of fishery resources" and, therefore, making a recovery plan of any kind is not necessary, "nor is any temporary cessation of fishing on biological grounds."
 
Gui Meneses stressed that "the closed period for biological reasons was the only thing that could be supported by the European Commission," stating that the closed periods already implemented were not due to biological reasons, but to "achieve a more rational management of the red seabream quota allocated to the Region."
 
Speaking Thursday after being heard by the Committee on Economic Affairs of the Legislative Assembly, the Regional Secretary stated that, under Community regulations, "it is completely impossible to divide the cessation of fishing activities by several periods," as suggested by the subscribers of a public petition.
 
"If there was a need to stop fishing on biological grounds, most of the fishing fleet would have to stop as 90% of vessels catch red seabream," said the government official.
 
According to Gui Meneses, "such a measure would be a chaos and would bring enormous losses to the fishing industry insofar as fish would cease to exist on the market and, consequently, traders would not have fish to sell."
 
Asked by journalists about the low income of fishers, the Regional Secretary said the Government is "making an in-depth diagnosis in order to collect information on the actual income of these professionals."
 
Gui Meneses revealed that "the small sample studied so far indicates that the income of most fishers is above the regional minimum wage," stressing that "the informal sale of fish also contributes to this income, but it cannot be accounted for and does not appear in official statistics."
 
Regarding recreational fishing, the Regional Secretary revealed that the Government, together with IMAR and the National Data Collection Programme, "called for an investigation to be carried out to make an initial assessment of the reality of catches in recreational fishing." However, "the greatest impact on fisheries comes from professional activity."