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Portuguese collaborate on fish conservation book

November 18, 2002

Safety and Quality Issues in Fish Processing is a new international book in the area of fishery in which two Portuguese researchers, Paulo Vaz-Pires and Alexandra Barbosa, have been an integral part.

Published by Prof. H. Allan Bremner a specialist from New Zealand and one of the greatest world authorities in sensory methods of evaluating the quality of fish, creator of Quality Index Method, available on the Web at http://www.qim-eurofish.com/index_start.htm) - and published by Woodhead Publishing, the work was launched only two months ago but the dates back to 2001.

The chapter written by Paulo Vaz-Pires, Alexandra Barbosa and Allan Bremner, is based on notes written by the Portuguese researcher since 1994. ?They were ideas I wrote and collected without really thinking what I would do with them?, remembers Vaz-Pires.

This deals with a subject that the Portuguese author is very sensitive about: «in the innumerable publications my work obliges me to read, I realised that there were certain inconsistencies. Colleagues from Northern Europe talked about much more efficient ways of prolonging the conservation of fish than in the south, which led me to try to find the explanation», he explains.

According to Vaz-Pires, the way to measure the efficiency of the conservation of fish, although seemingly similar, is normally different: researchers in the North tend to evaluate the shelf-life of fish through the tasting of fillets, while in the South there is a tendency to assess the external characteristics of whole fish, this being the most common form of commercialization.

From this scientific data is «difficult to compare, not being obtained in the same way», he says. «And, as the definition and translation of the expression shelf-life is complicated, what we propose in with our contribution is a type of clear definition of terms and methods, to avoid erroneous interpretations caused by the different forms of research».

Knowing of the interest that Allan Bremner in these areas, Vaz-Pires offered to write a scientific article about research methods ? but the result ended up being a chapter for the aforementioned book. Paulo Vaz-Pires had the help of his colleague Dra. Alexandra Barbosa, who was essential in the exchange of ideas and the revision for coherence in the final text; in this way the Portuguese collaboration in this book was born, «of which we are particularly proud, especially of our ideas being presented as co-authors with Allan?s edition of a book, where some of the world?s great specialists in the area of fishery appear».

Made up of 23 chapters, the book includes the participation of 31 researchers in the area of fishery from all over the world.

Observatório da CiÙncia e do Ensino Superior