How it all began - the discovery of the natural bounty all around Madeira

The Madeira fishing industry began soon after Gonçalves Zarco discovered the Island in the fifteenth century. Many of the sailors that accompanied the discoverer and the colonisers that followed them were themselves fishermen from the Algarve and other regions of Portugal. Initially fish such as the “Garapau” (Blacktail Combers) were caught off the rocky outcrops of the “Pontinha” and the “Forte São José” on the immediacies of the Funchal bay area.