Saving Seafood

Emergency meeting in Chile paints dire picture of salmon supply chain

April 3, 2020 — Workers in Chile’s salmon processing sector have been protesting on the island of Chiloé – an industry production hub – arguing the companies they work for are not doing enough to protect them from the COVID-19 virus.

Last week, the national government closed off Chiloé to much of outside traffic, only allowing the circulation of transport it deemed essential, which includes the salmon industry. Declaring the measures inadequate, Chiloé residents and even town mayors have taken to the streets in protest, closing highways to prevent all traffic, including salmon industry trucks, from circulating.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sernapesca implements 14-point measures to avoid salmon health emergency amid COVID-19

March 30, 2020 — While safeguarding workers’ health and taking preemptive measures against the closing of markets have topped Chilean salmon industry executives’ list of priorities throughout the COVID-19 crisis, the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) has raised another concern: What happens if the fish die?

A number of seafood company employees have already implemented a work-from-home policy for most employees to allow them to minimize contact with other humans and reduce the spread of the virus, but the continued operations of salmon farms require the presence of some workers at farming facilities. A curfew was declared on 18 March as part of Chilean President Sebastian Piñera’s emergency measures, and  isolation and the closing off of cities in the south was decreed for Puerto Williams and Chillán, as well as for Chiloé, an island with a large presence of salmon-farming firms. However, salmon farms and their employees are exempt from the restrictions, according to Chile’s Sub-Secretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Subpesca), as they must be compatible with a fundamental need of guaranteeing the availability of the country’s food supply.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Change of clothing every hour: Chilean fisheries confront COVID-19

March 26, 2020 — As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Chile rises, the country’s seafood industry is working to manage the spread  of the virus.

“The COVID-19 pandemic puts us all to the test: people, industries, and governments. We can clearly say that the companies that belong to the association are taking all the measures needed to prevent contagion,” Arturo Clement, president of Chile’s salmon industry association, SalmonChile, said in his Twitter feed. “As an industry, we have increased prevention measures to keep our workers safe.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SalmonChile suspending shipments to China in response to coronavirus outbreak

February 7, 2020 — Chile’s salmon trade group SalmonChile is the latest entity to interrupt business with China in response to the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

“In the last two weeks, all salmon shipments to China have been suspended and will continue in this way until the health emergency is controlled,” the trade organization announced in a statement. “This measure is not directly related to the [risk of] infections, but because demand has decreased to a minimum” in response to Chinese authorities’ recommendations to avoid crowds, affecting business at restaurants and large supermarket chains.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The Complicated Role of Iron in Ocean Health and Climate Change

January 6, 2020 — One brisk day in April 2013, as he drove with colleagues along the southern coast of Patagonia, Mike Kaplan spotted a geologist’s treasure trove—an active gravel pit with freshly exposed walls. He pulled over, grabbed the backpack full of digging tools stowed in the car trunk and walked into the large hole.

To Kaplan’s south lay the Southern Ocean, stretching toward Antarctica. Strewn around him was evidence of Earth’s most recent ice age: heaps of crushed rock and gravel released by one of the many glaciers that had once covered North and South America. Standing in the pit, Kaplan spotted what he was looking for: a layer of fine gray silt deposited by ice sheets roughly 20,000 years ago.

A geologist at Columbia University in New York, Kaplan has spent over a decade collecting the sediments that make dust, and studying how that dust, launched from earth to air to sea, influences Earth’s climate, past and present. Dozens of intriguing samples have made their way home with him, stowed in his suitcase or shipped in a duct-taped cardboard box. As he scraped the dark gray sediment into a plastic bag, he felt a rush of anticipation. Given the sample’s location, he thought that it might be just what he needed to test an aspect of a controversial idea known as the iron hypothesis.

Read the full story at the Smithsonian Magazine

Social unrest in Chile led to USD 656,000 in delayed salmon exports, official says

December 18, 2019 — Social protests and violence that erupted in Chile mid-October, including mobilizations at the salmon-farming area of Quellón and at ports used to move harvested salmon, cost around CLP 500 million (USD 656,485, EUR 589,076) in delays, according to Francisco Muñoz, the economy minister for southern Chile’s Los Lagos region.

The protests caused a 7 percent delay in volume with respect to the contracts that needed to be filled, Muñoz told SeafoodSource. Los Lagos represents 34 percent of all of Chile’s salmon breeding, while the region’s processing plants handle more than 70 percent of the salmon harvested.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

2025 global salmon growth forecasts overestimated, new paper argues

December 17, 2019 — Global salmon growth forecasts to 2025 could be overestimated by 6 to 8 percent, according to a new briefing paper from financial think tank Planet Tracker. The culprit is global warming, the paper argues.

In “Salmon Feels the Heat,” researchers analysed reported fish losses attributed to recurring environmental shocks over the past nine years, as reported by the 10 largest publicly listed salmon producers in Norway, Chile, and the United Kingdom. They found that the aggregated production and earnings losses relative to forecast production reached 5 percent for the period between 2010 to 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Global salmon production set to rise 6.5% in 2019, the highest increase since 2014

December 6, 2019 — Global production of farmed Atlantic salmon is expected to rise by around 6.5% this year, to approximately 2.6 million metric tons, which would be the highest year-on-year increase since 2014.

This was pointed out by a new report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The bullish scenario could be offset, however, by a mounting challenge with sea lice in Chile, the report predicted.

For 2020, the FAO foresees Atlantic salmon supply to grow around 4–5% year-on-year, but it noted that the ability of the Chilean industry to bring the biological situation under control will be an important consideration.

In the longer-term, the inherent growth limitations of traditional open net-pen aquaculture will continue to drive the development of alternative regions and methods for salmon production, the FAO said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Chile’s weeklong protests taking toll on salmon exports

November 1, 2019 — Social unrest and violence in Chile that has taken place over the past week has begun to affect key parts of the economy, including salmon production and exports.

Protests originally began over increased fares in capital Santiago’s metro system. However, protests quickly ignited nationwide, ballooning over issues as wide as social inequality, Chile’s overall cost of living, low minimum salaries, disappointing retirement system returns, politicians are seen as out of touch with reality, and justice perceived as unfairly favoring the country’s elite.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Scientists emphasize disease control in booming aquaculture sector

October 21, 2019 — At its last global conference, held in April in Santiago, Chile, the World Organization for Animal Health (known as OIE) focused on aquatic animals. The reason? Experts estimate that if the planet’s human population continues to increase as projected, the world will need to double its food production by 2050. The oceans, and aquaculture in particular, are seen as a main source for meeting this need.

“For the past decade, fishing of native animals has stabilized while aquaculture has increased enormously,” Monique Eloit, the OIE’s director-general, told Mongabay Latam. However, information about the health of aquatic animals is poor compared with that of land animals. According to Eloit, this gap must be addressed to secure the food supply for the coming decades.

Around 60 percent of human pathogens and three-quarters of first-emerging infectious diseases are of animal origin. Among these are bird flu strain H5N1, rabies, tuberculosis, the Ebola virus, and foot-and-mouth disease.

Since aquaculture is the fastest-growing food source, “it is likely that we will face greater health risks and challenges,” Eloit said. She recommended taking steps to improve disease management, biosecurity and the responsible use of antimicrobials.

Read the full story at Mongabay