Around 24,000 salmon weighing 180 metric tons (MT) died when a wellboat ran aground on 6 July in the Strait of Magellan, near Tamar Island, some 195 kilometers west of Punta Arenas in southern Chile, according to local press reports.
The wellboat, belonging to the company Detroit, was transporting the salmon from Santiago, Chile-based Australis Seafoods’ Punta Ramón farming center. The vessel’s 13 crew members were rescued by the Chilean Navy shortly after the incident and the maritime authority monitored the ship to control for fuel leaks. It confirmed the mortality of the fish inside the ship and ordered Detroit to remove the biomass, for which the company deployed another wellboat on the evening of 8 July.
The fuel is to be extracted from the wellboat's tanks once the removal of the salmon wraps up. Then the boat, the Heimdall, will be raised and towed to Puerto Montt.
The federation representing merchant marine unions, Fesimar, posted a video on its Twitter feed of the half-sunken Heimdall, with a tagline “And the accidents continue.” The incident is the second shipwreck involving salmon wellboats in less than two months in the south of Chile, after the vessel Don Julián sank in the waters of Calbuco, in the Los Lagos region, on 25 May. Previously, the Salacia salmon vessel suffered an explosion and caught fire while docked in Puerto Natales, leaving two workers with serious burns.
In Jun 2022, Chile’s Superintendency of the Environment (SMA) initiated a new sanctioning procedure against Australis’s 20-hectare Estero Retroceso grow-out center in the Magallanes region. The new procedure marked the sixth case that SMA has opened against the company, and the fourth concerning overproduction.
Earlier in June, Australis Seafoods named industry veteran Andrés Lyon as its new CEO, replacing Ricardo Misraji in a move that the company said looks to drive new development and consolidate ongoing operations. Australis is owned by China’s Joyvio Group.
Photo courtesy of the Chilean Navy
