Chile’s Superintendency of the Environment, SMA, has published in its Official Gazette general instructions for the implementation of a continuous monitoring system that will be required at 27 salmonid farming centers in the country.
Parameters such as oxygen levels, temperature, and salinity of the water at the grow-out farms must be reported in real time and will be measured by the SMA at depths of 5 and 10 meters every 5-60 minutes. The identified centers – belonging to farmers including Acuimag, AquaChile, Australis, Aysén, Blumar, Bluriver, Caleta Bay, Camanchaca, Cermac, Invermar, Marine Farm, Mowi, Multiexport, Nova Austral, Salmones Austral and Yadrán – will have two months to implement the real-time reporting, for which SMA is enabling an Application Programming Interface (API), to connect the monitoring systems online and allow continuous transmission of the pertinent data.
The criteria used for defining which farming centers must begin reporting were:
- Farms which recently started production cycles in the last year.
- Centers located in geographic areas with the highest concentration of operational aquaculture concessions.
- Centers with good geographic accessibility.
- Centers with a maximum authorized production-per-cycle of between 2,250 and 20,000 metric tons.
- Farming centers which have been subject to citizen complaints over anaerobic conditions at their sites, and those which have presented anaerobic conditions in past environmental reports.
- Centers that have the connectivity for adequate data transmission to the SMA.
In a second phase, all centers not included in the first round will have to connect within an eight-month period. SMA will evaluate the data collected together with national fishing service Sernapesca, the Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Subpesca), the Maritime Authority, and company representatives.
The move is to implement “a comprehensive inspection that covers all possible dimensions, using the greatest number of technological tools available, which places people and the environment in the center of our management focus,” SMA head Cristóbal De La Maza said in a release. “As a country we must incorporate more technology to professionalize these processes, which will provide robust support for prevention and environmental care.”
The new data, he added, will allow SMA to respond to issues much more quickly.
“With the delivery of online data by the farming centers, we will have information in real time, which will allow us to expeditiously, precisely and completely analyze data in the reports provided by the companies, in order to face in a timely fashion the possible contingencies that occur in the salmon industry,” he added.
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