Chilean fishing company PacificBlu has announced it will no longer seek to shutter operations.
In May, the industrial fishing firm announced it would be forced to close shop as of 1 January 2026 in response to the Chilean government’s plan to lower industrial fishing quotas of hake in a new fishing bill.
The bill circulating in Chilean congress proposes to lower quotas for industrial fishing in favor of artisanal fishers. Under the previous version of the bill, the quota for hake would have been lowered to 48 percent from the current 60 percent for industrial fishers.
In response, Talcahuano, Chile-based PacificBlu said its operations would have become unsustainable when the law was supposed to go into effect at the beginning of next year and that the resulting closure of the company would affect more than 800 direct workers, as well as another 2,400 indirect jobs.
Now, however, a joint commission in congress established that as long as the overall hake catch is equal to or less than 35,020 metric tons (MT), the applicable total catch quota would be set at 55 percent for the industrial fishing sector and 45 percent for artisanal fishers. Any amount over the set threshold would go entirely to the artisanal fishing sector.
The commission also moved to reopen the nation’s sea bream fishery – a resource which had previously been overfished and was, therefore, restricted in order to conserve the species. Within that fishery, 95 percent of quota would go to the industrial fishing sector and 5 percent to artisanal fishers. The bream fishery is largely landed by industrial operators due to the depth at which the resource is found.
PacificBlu – founded in 2014 as a partnership between three Talcahuano-based companies: Blumar, Pesquera BioBio, and Congelados Pacífico – lauded the decision.
“Following the important agreements adopted today by the Joint Fisheries Commission of the National Congress, we at PacificBlu want to communicate that we have decided to reverse the measure to close operations announced weeks ago, considering that the decisions taken will allow us to restore minimum conditions for the sustainability of our operation and, thus, maintain the formal employment that we provide in Talcahuano and the Biobío region,” the company said in a release. “The agreement reached is not only limited to quotas of the hake fishery; it also aims at the real recovery of the emblematic fishery for the country, incorporating concrete conservation measures such as the on-site certification of all landings.”
PacificBlu CEO Marcel Moenne also individually expressed relief.
While the industrial percentage will still be lowered, “this reduction was conditional on the recovery of the fishery and the increase in the overall quota, as well as the reopening of the sea bream fishery," he said. “In this way, parliament and the executive [branch] found a way to favor the artisanal sector without harming industrial jobs, which we value."
Moenne additionally noted that “the most important thing about the agreements reached is that concrete measures have been incorporated aimed at combating illegal fishing, thus achieving the recovery of this fishery in the medium term.”
“This gives us hope to project the future of the company and of both sectors, artisanal and industrial,” he said.
The bill will now go before the lower house for approval and subsequently be sent to the senate.
The existing Chilean fishing law, enacted in 2013 and set to last until 2032, handed control of the vast majority of Chile’s marine resources to a handful of large-scale private fishing firms in what the current government deemed was “illegitimate and illegal.” In response, Chile President Gabriel Boric has sought to introduce legislation to level the playing field, reducing quotas allocated to industrial fishing firms and increasing artisanal quotas.
Though firms like PacificBlu have expressed optimism about the new deal, others are less enthusiastic.
Felipe Sandoval, the president of the country’s National Fisheries Society (Sonapesca), which is Chile’s largest industrial fishing association, had previously defended the existing fishing law, saying that large-scale changes are not necessary.
While he recognized that the new hake quota would keep PacificBlu from closing, he doubled down on critiques of the new legislation and warned that it sets “a serious precedent for investment.”
According to Sonapesca, the agreement involves the transfer of 489,000 MT of marine resources – valued at USD 160 million (EUR 140 million) a year – from the industrial to the artisanal sector.
“Current legislation establishes that the conditions for quota allocation remain in effect until 2032 [while the proposed legislation] modifies that legal framework prematurely and unilaterally, without providing compensation to the affected companies,” he said. “This redistribution will force many companies to downsize and adjust operations … [leading to] a significant loss of formal employment.”
Cristian Arancibia, president of the Regional Federation of Artisanal Fishers (Ferepa), also criticized the deal but for reasons diametrically opposed to Sonapesca’s viewpoint.
“The only thing this group of politicians is doing is guaranteeing jobs for the industry without worrying about the sustainability of the hake, a resource which is currently collapsing due to the excessive trawling the industry has done in that fishery,” he told local publication Diario Concepción. “They're currently saying illegal fishing by artisanal fishers has been responsible for the ecological disaster affecting common hake. This isn't the case. Trawling is the primary culprit, and what these [proposed] regulations do … demonstrates that economic interests here take precedence over the common sense of social justice that artisanal fishing requires.”
