Dante Queirolo of the Pontifical Catholic University School of Marine Sciences in Valparaiso agrees that the hake fishery is in bad shape, and that illegal and unreported fishing is a serious problem. “People cheat,” he says. “We need to recognize that the monitoring system has failed.” To address this, the Chilean National Fisheries Service (Sernapesca) launched a new landing certification program this year to record how many fish are being caught by artisanal boats over 40 feet long.
The new landing certifications are part of an overhaul of Chile’s national fishing law, which went into effect in February 2013. WWF advocated for improvements in the law that focus on conservation and sustainability, including setting up legally binding fishery recovery and management plans, and using a transparent, science-backed process to set the yearly quotas.
One of the best places to find fish for domestic consumption is in Santiago’s fish market, built in 1996 with a grant from Japan. It’s the largest of its kind in the country, with over 1,000 tons of seafood sold every month, and it rumbles with activity starting well before dawn. Burly workers unload boxes of fish from trucks as vendors sell coffee and snacks out of shopping carts. Early morning buyers stroll between stalls looking for deals on every kind of seafood imaginable: salmon and giant squid, crabs and elephant fish, a whole octopus here, half a swordfish there. The smell is overwhelming, almost a visible haze in the air.
As the morning progresses, more shoppers arrive to haggle over ingredients for dinner or linger at a lunch counter over a thick bowl of caldillo de congrio, a traditional Chilean conger eel stew that’s known locally as a hangover cure.
The market reflects a vibrant slice of Chile’s economy, which in turn is only part of a much larger picture. Together, Chile, Peru and Argentina provide about 9% of the world’s total catch in two main categories: whitefish such as Patagonian toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass) and species low on the food chain like Peruvian anchoveta, used for fish oil and animal feed. Many of these stocks are in bad shape, which is why WWF helped establish the Southern Cone Alliance, a marine initiative aimed at long-term sustainability, in 2013.
WWF marine and fisheries offices in Chile and Peru, together with Argentina’s Fundación Vida Silvestre, a partner organization, are collaborating to ensure that the region’s fish are harvested at biologically safe and sustainable levels, without undue environmental impacts. The goal is to have three-quarters of priority fisheries certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) by 2020.