The South American country Peru boasts the largest fishery by volume in the world, catching several million metric tons (MT) of Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) each year, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Nearly all of Peru’s capture and production of anchovy is used for the production of fishmeal – a prime ingredient for animal feed, particularly for farmed fish, poultry, pork and pets. But Peru has more than the anchoveta fishery – it boasts a coastline of 3,080 kilometers (1,910 miles) that hosts the Humboldt Current, which carries Antarctic plankton-rich waters to nourish an abundant marine food chain.
The country has ambitions to create a domestic aquaculture industry. Neighboring Ecuador has become one of the largest producers of shrimp via aquaculture in the world, and Chile is a major salmon producer – while Peru lags behind.
Cayetana Aljovín is the president of Peru’s National Fisheries Society (SNP), which she has led since 2019. SeafoodSource was able to compile a list of the five top issues Peru is facing in 2023 based on a number of Aljovín’s op-ed pieces submitted to local paper Diario Correo, as well as comments from another fishing industry executive.
1. Ongoing violence
On 15 December 2022, Peru’s government instituted a national state of emergency, responding to outbursts of violence from protesters unhappy over the 7 December ousting of the country’s left-leaning president, Pedro Castillo, and the swearing in of then-vice president Dina Boluarte as Peru’s new head of state. Protestors saw the move as rural versus urban, poor versus rich.
Since then, protests have continued, particularly in the south of the country, and nearly 50 people have been killed, with accusations of excessive force from the police and army, The Guardian reports. Demonstrators have blocked roads and intermittently stalled several airports, heavily affecting another of Peru’s main industries, tourism.
Actors from several industries, including fishing, have called for peace.
“We understand the neglected needs of thousands of citizens and the frustration that this entails. But this, as history reminds us, cannot be solved with violence. Violence only brings more violence and destruction, truncating the dreams of thousands of families,” Aljovín said on 20 January. She advocated for dialogue, saying the violence was based on “various hidden interests that are linked to the worst mafias of illegality, corruption and outdated ideologies.”
According to the industry executive who spoke to SeafoodSource, but asked not to be named, currently there are some areas where road blockages remain active. However, the main roads and highways have been liberated with the help of the army and the people themselves, who “are looking to avoid losing everything.” For the fishery, neither shipments nor production have been interrupted for the time being.
The situation is ongoing and it has seafood executives, as well as international observers, on edge.
2. Anchovy fishery
Peru divides its anchovy fishing areas into two regions – south and north-central – with different capture limits and seasons set for each. The north-central is Peru’s main fishing region, with capture measuring several times that of the south region.
Peru’s Ministry of Production (PRODUCE) authorized a 28 November 2022 start for the second season of the north-central zone’s anchovy fishery, establishing a total allowable catch (TAC) of up to 2.28 million MT. PRODUCE stopped the season early due to the initiation of the anchovy’s spawning period, with the fishery at only 84 percent of the TAC. While PRODUCE did not provide exact figures, 84 percent of the TAC would be roughly 1.9 million MT of catch.
The early closure marked the second time in 2022 the fishing sector didn't reach its TAC. PRODUCE called an early end to the first season in the north-central region, which coincidentally also reached 84 percent of the TAC, or 2.34 million MT. Combined with the estimated 1.9 million MT caught in the second season, Peru's catch total was only an estimated 4.25 million MT – well below the 5.1 million MT of anchovy Peru caught in 2021.
“Despite the good health of anchovy biomass, which is around 10 million MT, 1 million MT were not caught compared to 2021 due to the late start of the second fishing season in the north-central area of the country,” Aljovín said at the end of December. She attributed the late launch to poor technical decisions at PRODUCE which she said “lost its specialist technicians and unfortunately little progress was made in fisheries policy” due to the political situation engulfing the country.
“This has had a direct impact on the production of fishmeal and fish oil for 2022 and, therefore, has affected the level of our exports,” she added. “As we pointed out at the time, for every day that fishing was stopped in this second season, Peru lost USD 30 million [EUR 28 million] per day, which will not be recovered.”
The TAC would have been met if the season had been launched just a couple of weeks previous, according to the fishing executive, who recognized 2022 as “a hard fishing year with both seasons unconcluded in terms of quotas.”
Aljovín expressed confidence that for 2023, “if weather conditions remain cool or neutral and if stability and predictability return to our sector, we will be able to return to 2021 levels, as the [Peruvian central bank] BCR predicted that the fishing sector will grow by 11.6 percent next year.”
3. Strengthening aquaculture
At the end of 2022, Peru’s congress passed bill number 31666, or the “Law for the Promotion and Strengthening of Aquaculture,” which restores tax benefits to aquaculture. It addresses law number 27360, the “Agrarian Promotion Law” which was repealed in December 2020, annulling such benefits.
“The recently approved law includes a series of benefits necessary to get aquaculture off the ground, such as the creation of a financing program with a state guarantee; tax incentives such as the early recovery of the [sales tax] I.G.V. and progressive reduced income tax rates, among others,” Aljovín said at the beginning of the year, highlighting FAO’s observation that aquaculture and fishing contribute to the improvement of food security and human nutrition.
She said that Peru, with its sea, Amazon rivers, and Sierra lagoons, has all the conditions to follow the examples of neighboring aquaculture powerhouses Chile, in terms of salmon, and Ecuador, with respect to shrimp.
The focus will be on trout, tilapia, shellfish, and prawns, while sea bass can be farmed by artisanal fishers in Ilo, as well as local species paiches, gamitanas, and pacos bred in the Pucallpa Aquaculture Park and many others in San Martín, Loreto and Amazonas, she said.
“There is no doubt that this must be the year that aquaculture takes off,” Aljovín said.
4. Underdeveloped resources
As a fishing country with significant coastline and natural resources, Peru may focus on species other than anchovy to complement the range of fish it offers.
Peru’s horse mackerel fishery is currently the country’s third most important after anchovy and squid.
“However, in our country, only 3.9 kilos of horse mackerel per capita are consumed per year; a considerably low figure despite the fact that there is currently greater availability of this resource in our productive sea,” Aljovín said at the end of January. She said that a main factor for this is that in the last few years, PRODUCE has been establishing “without much technical support” reduced catch quotas for the industrial fleet.
If adequate, well-supported quotas could be assigned to industrial fishing, horse mackerel could reach Peruvians’ tables at very affordable prices, she said, adding that this would contribute to partially solving the “food crisis that thousands of Peruvians in vulnerable situations are going through,” while also lowering food prices and consequently bring down inflation (in 2022, Peru's inflation was 8.46 percent).
She urged decision makers to move quickly on the allocation of the horse mackerel quota because “if it is not caught in time in our waters, it migrates quickly towards Chile or Ecuador.”
In a similar light, she called for an increased focus on the tuna fishery – an area in which Ecuador has traditionally excelled.
“While our neighboring country to the north catches more than 220,000 MT of tuna per year, our country only catches around 10,000 MT. However, this situation could change quickly with a focus on promoting public policies that promote this industry for the benefit of all Peruvians,” she said this February.
For the Peruvian tuna industry to take off and generate catches of around 100,000 MT per year, the country would need to address the cost of fuel, which in Peru is almost three times higher than in Ecuador. That price :makes it impossible to fish this resource when it moves away from the coast, which occurs nine months a year,” Aljovín said, calling for the establishment of a tax refund on fuel.
If the tuna industry could reach100,000 MT of tuna a year, it would address 70 percent of the local demand, quadruple jobs to the benefit of more than 70,000 people, drive production of more than 3.5 million boxes of canned tuna, and quadruple exports, generating more than USD 200 million (EUR 187 million) in foreign trade while increasing tax income, she said.
5. Illegal fishing
The SNP president is unambiguous when it comes to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, pointing her finger directly at China’s often questioned distant-water fishing fleet. As previously noted, squid represents Peru’s second largest fishery after anchovy. According to Aljovín, Peru catches about 440,000 MT a year in squid, bringing in some USD 600 million (EUR 561 million) in sales.
“However, the sustainability of this resource is threatened; since near the limit of our 200 miles of maritime domain, around 50,000 MT of squid per year have been fished irregularly and it is estimated that there are more than 630 Chinese-flagged vessels that are currently making these catches, thus harming our artisanal fishermen who are seriously affected by this unfair competition,” she said in December.
As such, she called for “a real fight” against IUU fishing with adequate control mechanisms put into practice; which today are more effective and accessible given technological advances.
“Instead of thinking about criminalizing formal actors in the fisheries sector, we should all implement a frontal fight against illegal fishing. Zero tolerance for these enemies of our sea,” Aljovín said, adding that effective combat would require a multisectoral effort between PRODUCE, the prosecutor's office, the judiciary, and the coast guard.
Overall, across the issues, Aljovín said that Peru’s seafood industry is optimistic about 2023.
“We are confident that 2023 will be a better year,” she said. “We see how proven technical officials are returning to the public sector, and the majority of Peruvians do not want more confrontation. We want to live peacefully and see that our country, which is a wonderful country, rich in natural resources but above all rich for its people, moves forward and advances. May 2023 be a year of union, peace and full of possibilities for all.”
Photo courtesy of Joseph Moreno M/Shutterstock
