Pilchard plunder

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 6

Pilchard plunder

THE FISHING industry in northern Chile is on the brink of collapse. After 15 years of unfettered expansion, pilchard stocks, which once fed the biggest fishmeal industry in the world, are dangerously depleted. In Iquique, a port perched on the edge of the towering mountains of the Atacama desert, the stench of fishmeal plants has disappeared. The plants are silent, facing an idle fishing fleet moored in the bay. Even the vultures and pelicans circling overhead look hungry. The pilchard catch has declined dramatically since a peak of 2.6 million tonnes was landed in 1985. Seiners — fishing vessels which carry long vertical nets — brought back

only a quarter of that last year. The outlook for this year is even more bleak. At Sernap, the national fishing inspectorate, Eduardo Gil says fishing companies are not prepared to acknowledge their share of the blame. "They tell us that the fish have gone south, gone north, gone further out, but the truth is that all the pilchards have been turned into fishmeal. "They are not fooling us, only themselves," Gil says. "This is a typical case of overexploitation. It happened to the herring stocks in the North Sea, in Japan and off California. We cannot be the exception." The average age of the fish caught has been dropping steadily since the mid-1980s. In 1991, fishermen were bringing in pilchards which were just six years old, the age of the sexually mature fish, indicating that stocks were on the border of extinction. Sernap fears that the fishing industry in northern Chile, which generates 40 percent of the region’s gross domestic product and employs 18,000 people, is about to collapse as it did 25 years ago, when anchovies were wiped out. Gil says it may take 20 to 30 years for pilchard stocks to recover. And because there is

nothing to take their place, many fishmeal plants face closure. The industry, which earned over $NZ700 million in exports in 1991, risks losing its place at the top of the world league. A number of the pilchard fishing companies are partly owned by New Zealand’s Carter Holt Harvey. These are currently losing over $NZ70 million a year. The scarcity of pilchards is also pitting fishmeal plants against carineries. Rival fishing fleets now employ a whole battery of detective equipment, including satellite photos, ultrasonar equipment and support aircraft, to lead them to the isolated schools of pilchards. Once detected, the race is on to fish as quickly as possible and keep the competition out of the area. Source: Financial Times