Horta, Faial

Charter departure port · Salt water · in The Azores

The marina and commercial port of Horta, on the south-east coast of Faial facing the channel towards Pico, enclosed by a breakwater carrying a beacon. The port authority calls it the most important marina in the Azores and the fourth most visited in Portugal; it opened in 1986 with a hundred and twenty berths and was enlarged in 2002 to three hundred.

Safety: boat traffic and being seen — can cause serious injury or death. 2 more points apply here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

Particular to this water: A departure port, not a fishing mark. What the fleet catches is recorded against the offshore ground rather than against this harbour, and what any individual boat may fish for is a matter for its skipper and the fisheries authority. And the water it leaves for sits inside an archipelago carrying a dense network of marine protected areas and seamount closures whose boundaries are lines on a chart and are not visible from a boat. Establish the current boundaries with the regional fisheries directorate before fishing.

FishingHQ describes what this place is, not whether you may fish it. Access, permits and who to ask.

Fish documented nearby, not here

Nothing below has been documented at Horta, Faial itself. Each one has been documented at a named place on the same ground, and the places are listed with it. Treat this as what the water around here holds rather than as a catch list for this mark.

Also documented at neighbouring places

One or two accounts each, on the ground around here. Enough to know the fish is caught in these waters; not enough to say anything about this place.

From a boat

Atlantic bonito — documented at The Faial–Pico channel
Yellowfin tuna — documented at The Faial–Pico channel
Mahi-mahi — documented at The Faial–Pico channel

How people fish it

Practised here: Sea fishing.

The ground and the water

The ground: The marina and commercial port of Horta, on the south-east coast of Faial facing the channel towards Pico, enclosed by a breakwater carrying a beacon. The port authority calls it the most important marina in the Azores and the fourth most visited in Portugal; it opened in 1986 with a hundred and twenty berths and was enlarged in 2002 to three hundred.
Exposure: Sheltered by its own breakwater and by the bulk of Pico across the channel, which is why the fleet is here rather than on the exposed northern side of the island. The water outside the channel is open North Atlantic and is a different proposition entirely.
Depth: Deep water close inshore, as everywhere on a young volcanic island: the shelf around Faial is narrow and the ground the boats work is reached in a short run rather than a long one.

Getting there

What public sources describe, last checked 2026-08-29. Car parks fill, services change and a path existing is not a path anybody may use — none of this is a guarantee of availability and none of it is permission to be anywhere.

Getting to it: The marina sits inside the port of Horta, on the town waterfront, and the town is reached by air to Faial or by the inter-island ferry across the channel from Pico. The port authority describes the marina as lying on the south-east side of the island within a breakwater-protected port.

Parking

Horta port parking
Harbour or operator parking · Charging not established
The port authority lists parking among the facilities at the port without stating a capacity or a charge, so neither is recorded here.

Where this access information comes from

Portos dos Açores: the marina and port of Horta, Faial — Portos dos Açores, S.A. — the Azorean regional port authority (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The regional port authority's own record of Horta marina: its position on the south-east coast of Faial, the breakwater that shelters it, its 300 berths and the services it lists.States this directlyPassage read and verified

What is there

Public toilets
Public toilets are listed among the port's facilities by the authority that runs it.
Drinking water
Fresh water is supplied on the quays, at a rate the authority states as ten tonnes an hour — a figure aimed at yachts rather than anglers, and a useful sign of how the berths are serviced.
Food or shelter
Restaurants and bars operate at the marina, along with shops and a tourist information point at the maritime terminal. What is open and when is their business rather than the port's.
Charter boats depart from here
The departure point for the Azorean big-game fleet, and the harbour two of the charter operators listed on this site work from. The Condor Bank lies roughly fifteen nautical miles south.
Harbour facilities
A working marina of three hundred berths with solid-waste collection, ballast-water management, round-the-clock ISPS compliance and a maritime police presence, inside a commercial port.

Safety

Boat traffic and being seen — Can cause serious injury or death

Summer small-craft traffic on this coast is heavy and fast, and a swimmer, breath-hold diver or small float is nearly invisible from a planing hull until it is too close to alter course.

What reduces it: Carry a surface marker buoy with a dive flag and keep it directly above the diver, work inside marked zones where they exist, and leave water where traffic is heavy rather than trying to be seen in it.

Boat safety — Can cause serious injury or death

The banks and seamounts that produce the fishing are open-ocean ground far from shelter, sometimes with the nearest alternative harbour on a different island, and Atlantic conditions can deteriorate faster than a small craft can cross that distance.

What reduces it: Treat a seamount trip as offshore passage-making rather than as a fishing outing. Go in a boat and with people equipped for it, set a turn-round decision on the forecast before leaving, and carry the means to call for help from beyond VHF range of land.

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

Swell reaches the islands from any direction with no shelf to dissipate it, so waves at exposed lava platforms are larger and less regular than the wind suggests and arrive in sets rather than steadily.

What reduces it: Check swell rather than wind and check its direction. Watch a platform for a sustained period before committing to it, and never fish a position you could not leave immediately.

Rules and access

FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. The Azores are an autonomous region of Portugal administering their own fisheries, and recreational sea and underwater fishing are licensed regionally. The archipelago also carries an unusually dense network of marine protected areas and seamount closures whose boundaries are not visible from a boat. Measures change. Check the current position with the regional fisheries directorate before going.

Who holds the answer:

The Regional Directorate for Fisheries of the Azores, which licenses recreational sea and underwater fishing across the archipelago.
The regional maritime authority, for protected areas and local measures.
The Regional Directorate for Fisheries of the Azores, for recreational licences and the rules on sizes, species and gear
The managing authorities of the archipelago's marine protected areas and seamount closures, whose boundaries govern what may be done inside them
The regional environment authority, for the crater lakes and the protected landscapes containing them
Charter skippers and dive centres, for current practice and for where the closure boundaries actually run

Nearby fishing

Other publicly documented places within about 40 km, by distance. Positions are approximate public geography and are never exact marks.

The Faial–Pico channel — 5–10 km · Sound or strait
The Condor bank — 25–40 km · Offshore bank
Velas, São Jorge — 25–40 km · Marina

Horta, Faial and the publicly documented places around it. Approximate positions, not marks. On a narrow screen the plot is wider than the screen and scrolls sideways inside its frame. Positions are approximate by design — they are capped at about a hundred metres and describe where a named public place is, not where fish are and not a mark. Everything plotted here is also listed below.

Sources for this place

Portos dos Açores: the marina and port of Horta, Faial — Portos dos Açores, S.A. — the Azorean regional port authority (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The regional port authority's own record of Horta marina: its position on the south-east coast of Faial, the breakwater that shelters it, its 300 berths and the services it lists.States this directlyPassage read and verified
EMODnet — the European Marine Observation and Data Network — The European Commission, assembled from the national hydrographic offices, geological surveys and marine institutes of the member states (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Charted bathymetry, seabed substrate and seabed habitat for European sea areas, assembled from the national hydrographic and geological surveys, at the resolution the product publishes.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
The European Environment Agency's assessments of Europe's waters, seas and coasts — European Environment Agency, Copenhagen (Conservation authority)Relied on for: Assessment of Europe's coasts and regional seas, including the condition of coastal water bodies, the pressures recorded on them and the coverage of designated sites.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-29.

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