December 31, 2013

 

 

After the government unveiled steep drops in the total allowable catches (TACs) for its main demersal and pelagic stocks for 2014, Chile's fishing industry is bracing for tough times in the near future with jack mackerel only stock to see an increase.

 

Anchovy fished in Chile's south (V-X) region is set for the steepest relative drop, with the TAC to be cut by 64.8%, or 77,800 tonnes, from 2013.

 

The steepest drop in absolute volume will be for sardine, which will see its TAC slashed by 232,000 tonnes, or 38.3%.

 

For demersal species, hoki and hake quotas will be cut by 52.5% and 33.3% respectively. Jack mackerel, only one up

 

In September, Chile unveiled that its pelagic landings were down by nearly 650,000 tonnes in the first nine months of the year, led by a 73% drop in sardine landings. While the 2014 south anchovy TAC will be slashed by more than half from 120,000 tonnes to 42,200 tonnes, the quota in the north (XV-II region) will drop less drastically to 751,000 tonnes from 800,000 tonnes.

 

The TAC for sardine (V-X region, in the south) has been set to 373,000 tonnes, a considerable cut from 605,000 tonnes set in 2013.

 

"The proposal to reduce quotas has not considered the social and economic effects of the drastic drop" - Cristian Tapia, counsel for the Chilean National Confederation of Artisanal Fishermen (Conapach) said. In contrast, the jack mackerel TAC has been set to increase by 19% on-year, up from 250,000 tonnes in 2013 to 298,000 tonnes.

 

Within demersal species, the hoki (V-XII region) catch limit has been set to 40,000 tonnes from 60,000 tonnes. In the centre (IV region), hake quota has been cut to 19,000 tonnes from 40,000 tonnes, while cuttlefish remains at 200,000 tonnes. Cuttlefish is the only one kept stable, at 200,000 tonnes.

 

The 2014 TACs therefore are therefore down by 447,800 tonnes in total - a 20% drop to 1.723 million tonnes, from 2.171 million in 2013.

 

Unveiling the TACs, Chile's head of fisheries - the undersecretary of fisheries and aquaculture - Pablo Galilea said the decrease in some quotas is a consequence of the complex situation of fisheries in Chile and the only way to recover is by restricting resources to levels that allow their sustainable exploitation over time.

 

Galilea called to think long term to achieve an effective recovery of the fishing resources, and appealed to comply with the current law, which establishes to use fisheries resources in a responsible and sustainable way, as well as to respect proposals from the scientific committees regarding catching quotas.

 

In the shorter term, however, the cut in TACs will hit Chile's numerous fishing players. The cuts will inflict US$10 million in losses and destroy 20,000 direct jobs for the country's artisanal fisheries, which represent 55% of the quota share in Chile, Cristian Tapia said.

 

The industrial fleet will also see an immediate negative economic effect from the quota reductions. Given expectations of low quota levels for 2014, the Chilean fishing firm and aquaculture producer Blumar had already said on December 10 that it expected to stop activity in some fishing vessels and plants.

 

Subpesca, for its part, has highlighted the new fisheries law establishes a social platform that will allow the reemployment of the processing plants' workers who may lose their jobs.

 

This action would be included within mitigation measures for fishermen, ships' crew and processing plants workers in the case of stocks exhausted, which will be effective once management committees are set during 2014. Among their duties, these committees will develop management plans for fisheries at risk, according to Subpesca.

 

Conapach agrees it is needed to implement a programme with mitigation measures for artisanal fishermen and workers from the sector, but, as Tapia said, so far the only committees already established are the scientific, not the recovery programmes.