By Maria M. Mur
Punta Arenas (Chile) (EFE) impacts on the pristine waters of southern Chile.
22.5 meters long and with a huge rainbow painted on one of its sides, it is the first time that the sailboat has sailed through Latin America since it was acquired by the NGO in 2021.
With seating for 15 people and a rising keel and rudder, the Witness can navigate shallow waters that are inaccessible to larger ships, such as the hundreds of fjords that stretch between Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas in Magallanes. , the southernmost region of the country, more than 2,000 south of Santiago.
A remote ecosystem of incomparable beauty, populated by humpback whales, dolphins, seals and sea lions, which aspires to the powerful salmon industry in Chile, the second largest exporter of salmon in the world, after Norway.
Third Chilean export
“Magallanes, today, is the region that concentrates the expansion of the industry. It has the largest number of concessions in process, more than 80, in addition to the more than 120 that have already been approved, many in protected waters,” Estefanía González, Greenpeace campaign coordinator, told EFE.
This industry, whose epicenter is located further north, in the Los Lagos region (900 kilometers south of Santiago), “has already destroyed entire areas and has left the sea deprived of oxygen in other regions,” said the activist.
Now, he added, “he is looking for new isolated, remote, clean areas, without any kind of intervention to come and do the same.”
Salmon farming, which began to develop strongly during the dictatorship (1973-1990), is the Chilean industry that exports the third most to the world, behind copper and lithium.
In 2022, more than 750,000 tons were exported for 6,606 million dollars, which is equivalent to an annual increase of 27.3%, according to the Salmon Council, one of the main employers.
For some years now, however, many voices have been denouncing the darker side of this lucrative industry and calling for more regulation and removal of salmon farms from protected areas in Patagonia, where there are around thirty species of cetaceans. and 50% of Chile’s seabirds.
“Many of the companies are of Norwegian origin because conditions are very similar to those there and Chilean legislation has many legal loopholes,” Joselyn Arriegada, a geographer at the University of Chile, told EFE.
Lack of oxygen
Arriegada is part of an expedition of scientists – which EFE accompanied for a few days – that seeks to collect data to compare “what are the untouched ecosystems and what are the impacts left by this industry.”
Sinking and abandonment of cages, massive escapes of salmon -an exotic-invasive species that preys on native fish that are under threat-, massive deaths of salmon due to infections and generation of anaerobic conditions in the sea (lack of oxygen) due to excess nutrients and Fecas are some of the damages denounced by ecologists.
The industry, however, maintains that it complies with all environmental regulations and that it has been the main economic engine in the south of the country for the last 30 years.
“Many of the centers that were active cannot operate because not even salmon can survive in these conditions,” González said from the Witness, a sailboat that has two wind generators, solar panels and a sustainable water system.
“We try to sail as much as we can. Obviously, when we have a schedule and we have to be somewhere, we use the engine, but we try to cause as little impact as possible,” its captain, Daniel Mares, told EFE.
After scrutinizing salmon farms, the Witness will cross the Strait of Magellan to join Greenpeace’s campaign against oil exploration and exploitation in Argentine seas and, as its name suggests, be a “witness” to possible environmental abuses.