A top executive in Peru’s anchovy sector has warned that the country’s south anchovy-fishing zone is in peril and should be a point of emphasis for the nation’s seafood industry at large when determining the most important issues to address in 2024.
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 zone is Peru’s main fishing region, with capture measuring several times that of the south region.
Peru’s anchoveta fishery encountered major problems in 2023, with its first fishing season in the north-central zone canceled and its second season closed early due to the sooner-than-expected arrival of the spawning season. The closure of the second season on 12 January left more than 25 percent of the fishery’s quota in the water.
However, according to Pablo Trapunsky, the CEO of Peruvian anchoveta fishing and processing firm Pesquera Diamante, Peruvian fisheries authorities should not overlook the south region fishery.
Trapunsky’s call for emphasis on Peru’s south zone was in response to a compilation of the five main issues Peru’s fishing industry is facing this year, based on a number of opinion pieces by Eduardo Ferreyros – the president of Peru’s National Fisheries Society (SNP) trade group. The list made no mention of the critical situation in the south zone.
“In addition to the list of issues, there is the precarious situation of fishing in the southern area of Peru,” Trapunsky told SeafoodSource. “As with every year, we should be fishing by now in the [Southern Hemisphere’s] summer time. However, the biomass in the south is shared with Chile, and it’s pretty easy to check fishing figures from south Peru and north Chile to discover what’s going on there.”
According to data from Peru’s Production Ministry (PRODUCE) and Chile’s national fishing service Sernapesca, 2009 was the last year that Peru’s southern region surpassed Chile’s northern region in anchovy landings, bringing in 569,000 metric tons (MT) compared to Chile’s 498,000 MT. Every year since then, Chile’s north has outperformed Peru’s south.
The reason, according to Trapunsky, has to do with Peruvian authorities failing to respond effectively to changing environmental conditions.
“Our authorities stick to the so-called ‘legal anchovy size,’ which is a measure dating from 1953 that establishes 12 centimeters as the minimum legal length for anchovy to be caught. This was even before the foundation of Imarpe [the Peruvian Marine Institute – the scientific body used by PRODUCE to define total allowable catches], and even they can’t explain why it was defined that way, since there’s no scientific background for such a limit,” he said. “For a decade now, Imarpe’s reports on anchovy have shown that the anchovy’s sexual maturity varies from 9 to 10.5 centimeters, meaning that at that size, the species has already gone through spawning at least once.”
What makes the 12-centimeter target even more difficult for fishers is the fact that, according to Imarpe, anchovies are smaller on average than they used to be due to a change in diet, with more of a concentration on eating phytoplankton over the zooplankton they previously consumed predominantly.
“The small size and low fat content in the anchovy has to do with the food it finds in the ocean. It’s not the quantity but the type of food that impacts the growth,” Trapunsky said.
Trapunsky said Peru's government should prioritize changing the legal catch size to help out its fishing industry.
"While we discuss whether we should adjust the legal size [for anchovy catch], no fishing goes on there and Chile continues to catch the fish we don’t,” he said.
Trapunsky also complained that the country’s industrial fleet is limited to operating 5 miles off the coast, but Peru’s south zone sharply drops off soon after traveling off the shoreline, reaching deep waters quickly. Schools of anchovy follow food sources into shallower waters. Up until 2011, PRODUCE allowed the industrial fleet windows of time to fish up to 1.5 miles from the shore, but after 2011, the fleet was required to stick to the 5-mile limit. Consequently, Peru’s processing capacity supporting the south zone has steeply declined.
In the last 15 years, Peru’s anchovy catches in the south zone peaked at 870,000 MT in 2008; the lowest annual catch sunk to 26,000 MT in 2023 due to the aforementioned limits and effects from El Niño. Between 2008 and 2011, the south zone saw landings that averaged 608,000 MT per year, providing material for 13 processing plants. From 2012 to 2015, landings averaged 313,000 MT per year, and between 2016 and 2023, this fell to an average of 169,000 MT per year. Currently, there are only four processing plants still in operation receiving anchovy catches.
Though Chile also enforces a 5-mile fishing limit, which has similarly hurt production, the country manages its anchovy fishing stocks through indirect stock assessments that are cross-referenced with other fishery studies and data, giving the industry clearly defined reference points and resulting in allocated quotas moving the fishery toward its maximum sustainable yield. Chile’s Center for Applied Research of the Sea (CIAM) implemented an adaptive management model based on scientific information developed by institutes and universities, backed by use of artificial intelligence models.
Through these frequently updated models, Chile does not have as strict limits on size as Peru, according to Trapunsky.
“The current authorities have shown zero interest and zero commitment with the industry, despite thousands of employees being in danger of layoffs and companies struggling with cash flow and debts,” he said.
Photo courtesy of LinkedIn/Pablo Trapunsky
