The Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture (SUBPESCA) has presented the Public Account of the Resource Status 2016 with the situation of the main Chilean fisheries. This report, issued by the Fisheries Administration Division, year after year reports on the status of each closed access fishery. The undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture (S), Paolo Trejo, reported that of the 43 existing fisheries in the country, today 25 have biological reference points (PBR), formalized by the Technical Scientific Fisheries Committees. He noted that this effort began in 2014, and sets demanding standards in terms of the precautionary approach. “An important step for this administration that has allowed us to advance in the conservation and sustainability of the resources,” he stressed.
“According to the Public Account of Resource Status 2016, of these 25 fisheries, one is in the under-exploitation status, seven in full exploitation, six in over-exploitation and nine of them are depleted or collapsed, while in two fisheries no status was determined. Out of this situation, three fisheries showed an improvement in their status, while one moved to a collapse level,” stated Trejo. In the case of the remaining 18 fisheries, they are subject to suspension of access (full exploitation) and mostly with formed management committees. Among the positive status changes presented by the 2016 report, the red squat lobster is highlighted (Regions XV to IV), which from full exploitation status in 2016 moved to under-exploitation, being located in the maximum sustainable and higher yielding status of the Fishery, being the fishery with the most important improvement of the period. Further good news came from the anchovy fishery (Regions III and IV), which went from overexploitation (qualified in 2015), to a fully exploited status in 2016. Meanwhile, Chilean hake came out of depleted status to be located in overexploitation status.
However, the status of the hoki (V-XII) declined in comparison to the year 2015, to the exhausted or collapsed condition in 2016. This definition was made on the basis of the stock assessment carried out by the IFOP and The PBRs adopted by the Technical Scientific Committee and duly formalized, and it was concluded that the spawning stock biomass is in a state of exhaustion, although with a rate of exploitation around the maximum sustainable yield. Trejo highlighted the improvement of the status of the three fisheries: “This progress towards the sustainability restates that the conservation strategies and the precautionary approach we are pursuing have been well under way, where the adopted management measures, following the guidelines of the Scientific Technical Committees of each fishery have made it possible to continue advancing”.
He also underlined “the close commitment of the entire fishing sector of the country through the 34 Fisheries Management Committees, the 16 operational management plans and the new plans passed in 2016 (common hake, southern hake, demersal crustaceans, northern golden kingklip, southern golden kingklip, anchovy and common sardine, also for benthic resources, standing out huepo and navajuela). Work that shows that the recovery of the domestic fisheries is everyone’s task.”