Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2.3 Salmon production in Chile
The larger fresh water (FW) production is based in La Araucanía region (IX), Los Ríos (XIV)
andLos Lagos (X). Seawater (SW) production has been mainly developed in Los Lagos
region; in 2006, on a rather small area from Puerto Montt in the north to Quellón on the
Chiloé Island a total of 499,512 tons of salmonids were produced. Due to the increase of SW
production in Los Lagos region, Quellón was expected to become the biggest centre for
salmon processing in Chile. However, before the ISA crisis in 2008, the production has been
expanded to Aysén region (XI) and Magallanes region (XII) having the total harvest of
208,961 tons and 6,053 tons, respectively. In 2005, SalmonChile A.G. projected an annual
growth of about 8-10% for the following 5-10 years. These expectations were based on
exploiting the potential of moving most of the production to Aysén and Magallanes regions
and to expand the FW production using highly advanced recirculation plants.
Historically the salmon cluster, including producers, processing plants, and services, has
demanded up to 28,368 and 7,631 direct and indirect job positions, respectively
(SalmonChile, 2007b). Specifically, the industry covers 0.7% of the job positions in the
country and accounted for 11% of the employment in the Los Lagos region (X). The latter
has contributed significantly and positively to the improvement of poverty in those
municipalities where salmon aquaculture has been developed. Usually, the employment
within producers is distributed in each of these stages of production with approximately
65% of total workers in sea farms, 30% in smolt production and 5% in hatcheries producing
eggs. However, the number of employees decreased drastically down to 50% due to the
sanitary crisis and the lower production in 2009.
2.3.1 Freshwater production
Current FW operations in Chile include lake-based, tank and cage systems, estuary cage
systems, stream-based flow-through systems and recirculation tank systems. In 2008, the
Chilean FW farms produced over 741 million salmonid ova and 298 million smolts, out of
which 29% came from estuary-based farms, 30% from lakes and 41% from land-based
facilities, or nurseries. While most hatcheries supply smolts for grow-out in farms owned by
their parent company, many hatcheries also contract to supply smolts to unrelated farms,
either using eggs from their own broodstock lines or using eggs provided by the contracting
farms (Olson & Criddle, 2008). There are 169 FW facilities in Chile out of which 20 are
recirculation systems (Silva, 2010a). Historically, in Chile, to produce one smolt has required
from 2 to 5 eggs doubling the current needs in Norway (Águila & Silva, 2008).
Chilean-spawned eggs were available as early as 1980, but Chilean hatcheries remained
largely dependent on fertilized eggs from foreign broodstock through the 1990s. Since the year
2000, nevertheless, Chilean egg production increased dramatically (Figure 2) and 79% of all
eggs used in Chilean hatcheries were produced from local broodstock in 2009 (Sernapesca,
2011a). The decrease of near 70% observed in the national production of Atlantic salmon eggs
is based on the effects of the ISAv crisis, going from near 500 million eggs in 2008 to close to
160 million in 2009. In addition, the import of egg fell substantially in 2009, mainly due to the
lower production, but also based on restrictions, fear of importing new pathogens and changes
in production strategies implemented by different companies. However, the import of
rainbow trout egg increased more than double in 2010. Both rainbow trout and Coho salmon
production grew approximately 25% and 37% with an increase in production due to the lower
sanitary risk involved in their production between 2009 and 2010.
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