Chilean Purseiner(Photo: Stock File)

Chilean coast has the lowest trawling footprint in the oceans, according to study

CHILE
Tuesday, October 23, 2018, 22:50 (GMT + 9)

A study in which more than 50 international scientists participated reveals that the impact of bottom trawling in the oceans is lower than what was estimated, and places Chile as one of the best evaluated and most sustainable countries in the world.

Given that a quarter of the world's fish and shellfish come from trawling activity, the study of the possible impacts generated by this global activity has been one of the focal points of fisheries scientists.

This is present in the paper Bottom trawl fishing footprints on the world’s continental shelves published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which had the participation of 58 scientists based in 22 countries and analyzed the activity in 7.8 million km2.

International experts mapped the fishing activity from satellite monitoring and data from fishing logs, and concluded that the trawling footprint in the world's oceans has been "substantially overestimated", especially in Chile.

             Mean interval between trawling events and the proportion of unfished area at depths 0–1,000 m for regions in (A) the Americas, (B) Europe, (C) Australasia, and (D) Africa. Black lines indicate boundaries of study regions, pale blue tones indicate depths of 0–200 m in the study regions, darker blue tones indicate depths of 200–1,000 m in the study regions, and all deeper areas and areas outside study regions are shown in white. In all numbered regions, the proportion of bottom trawling included in this analysis exceeds 70 per cent of the total activity.

"Only 0.4 per cent of the seabed facing southern Chile is being trawled, while more than 80 per cent of the seabed in the Adriatic Sea and a part of the Mediterranean Sea, which has the strongest footprint," is one of the conclusions of the report, whose main author is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington Ricardo Amoroso.

In recent years, Chilean industrial fishing has increased its efforts to maintain the sustainability of the species it captures. Along these lines, it has managed to certify the five crustacean fisheries under the rigid international standards of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). In addition, soon the certification would be added to the main fishery of Chile: the one of jack mackerel.

The foregoing, according to the researchers, would be because Chile has such a small trawling footprint.

"For those regions where bottom trawling was less than 10 per cent of the seabed area, fishing rates in bottom-dwelling fish populations almost always meet international sustainability standards. But when the footprints exceed 20 per cent, they rarely found them," says Simon Jennings of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and co-author of the report. In the studied area, Chile has only 0.4 per cent.

Proportions of the total area of each region, at depths of 0–200 and >200–1,000 m, trawled at different frequencies. Region code numbers increase as regional SAR decreases.

The new study was well received by the trade union federation that brings together industrial fishermen, Sonapesca FG, whose general manager is Héctor Bacigalupo.

"These data show us that we have done a good job in terms of sustainability of resources and proper use of nets, which make a precise selection of the species that is caught. Protecting the fishing species should be the focus, especially in a country that has more than four thousand kilometres of coastline, and is what as a union we started encouraging long ago," said the fishing leader.

Furthermore, the executive explained that in Chile, trawling does not cause damage to the seabed, since this is mud and sand, and there are no coral reefs or other vulnerable marine ecosystems.

"The 0.4 per cent of trawled area detected in this investigation is exclusively due to mud and sand. Our industry does not practise trawling in any protected or vulnerable marine area, but in established places that do not cause environmental impact. We are the first ones to be interested in the sustainability of our activity and in the care of the oceans," said the general manager of Sonapesca FG.

"More than worrying about the trawling activity, given the positive results of this international report and several others that show that Chile uses selective nets, the authorities should create a relentless framework against illegal fishing, a real scourge of the fishing activity in Chile," he added.

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