LISBON, March 13 (Xinhua) -- A compensation fund of 500,000 euros (619,628 U.S. dollars) is being established in the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, to entice local fishermen to abandon the profession, local government announced on Tuesday.
"The intention is to enable people who want to get out of the trade to do so with dignity," said Vasco Cordeiro, president of the regional government of the Azores.
Cordeiro, as reported by the Portuguese Lusa News Agency, was speaking at the Regional Council for Fishing in Horta, a town on the island of Faial, one of nine islands that make up the Azores mid-Atlantic archipelago.
The pay-off initiative is part of a government package designed to tackle problems in an industry deemed to be excessively staffed and too traditional in its methods.
According to a survey jointly produced by local fishing associations and independent partners, around 550 boats, some 60 percent of the entire fishing fleet of the Azores, are less than 9 meters in length and roughly 25 years old.
Such boats are only fit for small-scale fishing, forcing fishermen to revisit nearby waters where stocks are low. Ideally, the government would like the owners of these boats to transfer their energies to a different activity.
The survey also pointed to a mismanagement of resources with too many fishermen concentrated on certain islands and not enough stationed on others.
Local government wishes to address this anomaly while introducing new employment models. As things stand, fishing contracts tend to be informal and incomes too dependent on captured quantities.
There are likewise proposals to overhaul the management of fishing stocks, with revised quotas and improved vigilance.
"When we talk about sustainability in the fishing sector, we cannot only talk about environmental sustainability, we cannot only talk about economic sustainability, we have to also talk about social sustainability," Cordeiro said.
The Regional Council for Fishing will now consider the government's proposals and report back once a form of consensus is agreed.
