Chile’s Supreme Court has ratified a sanction against Mowi Chile for the 2018 escape of more than 600,000 salmon from the company’s Punta Redonda farming center in the southern Los Lagos region.
The fine – equivalent to CLP 7.44 billion (USD 8.2 million, EUR 7 million) – was originally levied against Mowi by Chile’s environmental authority body, the SMA, in 2020 for what the authority deemed as “irreparable environmental damage,” saying the farmer had failed to maintain “the appropriate security conditions and cultivation elements of optimal quality and resistance.”
At the time, SMA cited outdated water current measurements at the center, which was built in 2017, failure to implement recommended moorings, and evidence of wear and tear on nets and mooring lines to which the company did not respond, which led to the escape when the center was subjected to extreme weather conditions.
In February 2025, Chile’s Third Environmental Court confirmed the sanction levied by SMA against Mowi Chile following an investigation into the event.
The highest court in the South American nation has now upheld the environmental court decision and ruled out Mowi’s position that the escape resulted from a fortuitous or exceptional meteorological event. The court further found that the escape caused significant, irreparable environmental damage to the Reloncaví Sound as the release of Atlantic salmon – an invasive, exotic species – could result in predation of native fauna.
The court reaffirmed that the significance of environmental damage is not evaluated only by immediate consequences but also by its ecological effects and projection over time. It noted that even if it were not possible to prove all the direct effects of the escape, the massive release of an invasive species into a fragile ecosystem constitutes a significant danger to the environment.
Nevertheless, Mowi Chile continues to maintain that the incident was the result of an exceptional weather event and that all possible mitigation measures were taken in coordination with authorities to control the situation, preventing irreversible environmental damage. Following the Supreme Court ruling, it filed an appeal for reconsideration, requesting a review of the court’s grounds for the ruling.
