In the coming weeks, the Cabildo de Tenerife will begin to pay the subsidy of 140,000 euros to the ten fishermen’s associations on the island announced at the beginning of summer to help defray their current expenses and in this way promote the activity of artisanal fishing and guarantee its viability. This was announced yesterday by the island president, Pedro Martín, who indicates that “since the beginning of the mandate, one of our main objectives has been the defense of the local product and the work of professionals in the primary sector, in this case we are talking about fishing, but also of oil, wine, potato or honey, among others».
Martín emphasizes “the importance” of dynamizing the brotherhoods, promoting artisanal fishery products and contributing to the maintenance of professional fishing, and recalls that “in these three years of mandate we have more than tripled the budget for fishing.” “In fact, in total, this government has dedicated more than two million euros to promoting artisanal fishing,” said the president of the Cabildo. For his part, the island councilor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Javier Parrilla, points out that each brotherhood will receive a total of 14,000 euros. In this sense, he recalls that “the fishermen’s associations guarantee the sanitary conditions of fishery products and are the initial tool against poaching, which destroys our economy and our environment.”
The fishermen’s associations advise and guide their members on the procedures that fishermen have to carry out, such as the daily management of permits, authorizations and procedures before different administrations, in addition to informing, managing and processing aid, programs and subsidies. In the same way, they are the entities authorized to carry out the procedure for the first sale of the archipelago’s fishery products, a procedure that all fishery products must go through to be legal before entering the marketing chain.
Fishing activity in Tenerife is characterized by the medium size of its boats, by the limited power of its engines and by crews made up, in most cases, of members of a family unit. The artisanal boats develop versatile capture strategies, all of them sustainable, to take advantage of the diversity of the insular ecosystems.
