(Read news in La Prensa Austral)
Lhe regional directorate of the National Fisheries Service in Magallanes filed 42 complaints last year against salmonid-producing companies for non-compliance with the General Fisheries and Aquaculture Law.
These are associated with "overproduction, contamination on beaches close to cultivation centers, bottom intervention, poor management of caligus (sea lice), poor management of mortality, non-compliance in harvesting and transport, and planting more fish than authorized," according to the agency.
Of the 42 complaints, 34 were filed with the Superintendency of the Environment, five with civil courts and three with the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The regional director of Sernapesca, Patricio Díaz, highlighted the work deployed at the local level, noting that "our regional aquaculture team made a great effort, carrying out field inspection actions, complementing them with remote and documentary activities. We hope that during 2023 this figure will decrease, considering that the companies have indicated that they are concerned about resolving different problems associated with the non-compliances detected".
Seventy-one percent of the complaints filed in 2022 were for environmental issues and of these, 88% were for overproduction, this non-compliance being understood as the production of more biomass than that authorized by the respective environmental qualification resolution issued by the Environmental Assessment Service.
In Magallanes, Sernapesca has a vessel to inspect aquaculture activities, which has made it possible to reinforce on-site inspections, complementing the inspections with Navy vessels, remote and documentary inspections.
Salmon farmers of Magallanes: "We are the most supervised activity in Chile and with a 99.2% compliance rate".
The president of the Association of Salmon Farmers of Magallanes, Carlos Odebret, referred to the figures provided by Sernapesca, pointing out that they respond to the strong inspection they are subject to: "In 2021, salmon farming was the most inspected activity in Chile by the Superintendence of the Environment, with more than 1,300 files opened, achieving a compliance rate of 99.2%. While, looking at the figures for the same year from Sernapesca, we see that the Special Environmental Control Program carried out a total of 531 audits and the vast majority of these actions did not culminate in complaints deposited with the competent bodies because there were no irregularities".
In this regard, Odebret stated that "the salmon industry is constantly improving, and as the regional director of Sernapesca pointed out during this meeting, the production companies are the main interested parties in resolving the observations detected in order to operate under the standards required by law".
(Read news in La Prensa Austral)