Azores but this is not certain. In Thomas Ashe's 1813 work, "A History of the Azores", the author identified a Fleming, Joshua Vander Berg of Bruges, who made landfall in the archipelago during a storm on his way to Lisbon. He stated that the Portuguese explored the area and claimed it for Portugal. Other stories note the discovery of the first islands (São Miguel Island, Santa Maria Island and Terceira Island) by sailors in the service of Henry the Navigator, although there are few documents to support the claims. Although it is commonly said that the archipelago received its name from
Protected areas of the Azores today constitute the nucleus of the Island Nature Parks on each island. It was followed by Regional Legislative Decree 21/93/A (23 December 1993), which applied to the Azores the same jurisdictional regime established in national Decree 19/93 (23 January 1993), the "Rede Nacional de Áreas Protegidas" ("National Network of Protected Areas"). More than an adaption of the national regulations, it created the institutional structure that would give rise to Azorean protected areas, resulting in a reclassification of existing areas. Unfortunately, there were problems with the scheme, since the codification was not literally adaptable to the insular nature of the archipelago