Portugal launches unprecedented scientific research

The Condor Fishing Bank will now remain closed for two years to serve as the largest and sole, live laboratory of the North Atlantic Ocean in the world.

The research project, in collaboration with the University of Açores, the regional government and shipowners and fishers associations, will serve as reference for the future management of local seafood resources.

''In these two years we are going to study [everything] from bacteria to cetaceans that inhabit the Condor Bank,'' indicated Guy Menezes, of the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries in Horta. This research ''will have influence over future policy decisions,'' he added.

Similarly, he noted that next July the Azores boat Noruega and further on the ship Gago Coutinho, equipped with the robot Luso and the submarine Luta, of the Rebikof Niggeler Foundation will also arrive on the scene.

''In its beginnings, this project was purely scientific, but, naturally, it has a component more applicable to fishing,'' Menezes said.

The scientists hope that once the fisheries in the area remain interrupted for 24 months, ''some alterations in terms of the abundance of the species that inhabit it'' are observed.

''This project is unique in global terms: nowhere that we know of has a [fishing] bank been closed purely for scientific experimentation on a large scale,'' Menezes pointed out.

As far as the boat Noruega, of the Portuguese Research Institute of Fisheries and the Sea (IPIMAR), he explained that it will furnish mid-depth mesh nets to gather microorganisms, supplied by the Norwegians.

Norway will also loan a device to collect sediment that can analyse bacteria and viruses living at the bottom of the submarine bank.