Environmental scandal in Chile

[Judi Lynn]

Environmental scandal in Chile
June 22, 2010

Until recently, the disastrous scale of the threat posed by salmon farms to the fauna and National Park of the Aysen region of southern Chile was entirely unknown. The unexpected discovery was made by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the University of Gottingen, who were studying acoustic communication among the native whales in the region.

The researchers not only discovered that the salmon industry is rapidly spreading to the hitherto largely unspoiled south of the region; they also documented the previously unknown threat to the region's native sea lions. The international environmental organisations have expressed their surprise at this accidental discovery. The Göttingen researchers report their observations in the "Correspondence" section of the current edition of the journal Nature.

With an export volume in excess of two billion US dollars, Chile is one of the world's main producers of farmed salmon. The aquaculture, which is carried out on a massive scale, is mainly concentrated on the ramified fjords of the province of Aysén in Patagonia. While parts of the province are classified as a National Park, the protection does not extend to the surrounding sea. The salmon farms, which are entirely legal from the government's perspective, have, in part, devastating impacts on the region's entire ecosystem - not least because Atlantic salmon is an alien species in Chile, introduces diseases and therefore poses an additional risk to already threatened native species. Moreover, the use of medication on the farms and the waste they produce also burden the ecosystem.

The ISA (infectious salmon anaemia) virus, which causes anaemia and death in salmon, has forced many aquaculture operators to close down their farms in northern Chile in recent years. "The farms, however, are now spreading further south," reports Heike Vester from the Norwegian research institute Ocean Sounds, who is currently completing her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the University of Göttingen. Because the region's ramified fjords are difficult to access from land, the full scale of the impact of this development only became clear to her when she was carrying out research from the water. Vester's photographs document, among other things, the threat posed to the South American sea lion. The animals get caught in the protective nets surrounding the salmon farms when young and, even if they manage to free themselves, parts of the nets often remain stuck to the sea lions and suffocate them as they grow (Image 1).

More:
http://www.physorg.com/news196436386.html

[hatrack]

1. After The Gold Rush - Chile's Doomed Fish Farms

While an interview with Mary Ellen Walling, top lobbyist for the salmon farming industry in BC, was being published in the Vancouver Sun this past Tuesday, I was flying back to Canada from Puerto Montt, Chile - ground zero for the Chilean salmon farming industry.

I had spent a week documenting the heartbreaking environmental, cultural, and socio-economic devastation wrought by the industry there. Gross mismanagement of Chilean salmon farming - which reached its apotheosis as second largest global producer until collapsing suddenly over the past two years - led to a devastating outbreak of the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus, which wiped out three quarters of the country's farmed salmon. Aside from the environmental catastrophe, the human costs have been astounding. Close to half the workforce, 24,000 Chileans, lost their jobs almost over night. Unable to return to the lives they left to join the once burgeoning industry, they now struggle to feed their children in towns that resemble a gold rush after the gold is gone.

EDIT

And so it was to my horror that I read Mary Ellen Walling's callous take on the Chilean Crisis I had just witnessed. Walling told the Vancouver Sun: "Prices are up 10 to 15 per cent over the past six months because of the lack of product in the marketplace...It's good for the B.C. industry because we've got good, solid prices moving forward...There's a significant lack of Chilean product in the U.S. market. It's a great opportunity , but we can't take advantage of it. B.C. is home to a range of anti-salmon-farming groups. campaign has delayed opportunities for the industry to expand."

EDIT

The Norwegian companies who likely brought the virus to Chile are now lobbying along with the banks who finance the industry to privatize the country's ocean farm tenures. Unlike Canada and Norway, the Norwegian behemoths don't yet dominate the industry in Chile - roughly half of the companies are still Chilean owned. However, they are smaller than the Norwegian multi-nationals and thus more immediately vulnerable to bankruptcy from the ISA crisis. The farm tenures have always been leased to companies by the state. Now that many of the smaller Chilean companies are defaulting on their loans as they have no product to sell, the banks and the big Norwegian companies are pushing to privatize the water rights, so that they can take them over as collateral for the defaulted loans. The banks will seize the farm tenures and sell them to the big Norwegian companies - who can weather the storm of their own making...and Presto!

EDIT

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4710-after-the-goldrush-chiles-doomed-fish-farms.html

[bemildred]

2. Parasites and pathogens love mono-cultures. nt