Anchovy capture. (Photo: Sociedad Nacional de Pesquería)

Document highlights effectiveness in anchovy juvenile protection

PERU
Saturday, July 22, 2017, 00:00 (GMT + 9)

The National Fisheries Society (SNP) released the document Contributions to the debate on fisheries: The protection of juveniles in anchovy sustainability as part of its effort to inform public opinion in a transparent way about the activities of the anchovy fishing industry.

The document highlights all the measures taken by the Ministry of Production (PRODUCE), Instituto del Mar del ​​Peru (IMARPE) and the fishing industry that is responsible for the protection of juvenile anchovy species (size less than 12 cm).

According to the SNP, this system has contributed to the conservation of the resource, as it can be reflected in the difference in percentages of juveniles recorded in scientific surveys and in catches of the fishery in recent years.

Likewise, it points out that this publication aims at overturning versions of some sectors, such as the possibility that the anchovy is being depredated, whose statements have no technical or scientific support.

The low presence of juveniles in a population assessment would be worrisome because the existence of many juveniles means that the reproductive process has been successful and the population is being renewed, the document issued by the SNP points out.

In this regard, the SNP president, Elena Conterno, pointed out that to date there has been no detection equipment to differentiate between adult and juvenile fish in absolute terms before fishing them. "For this reason, a boat could fish juveniles in an unpredictable or desired way," she said.

Given this scenario, in coordination with IMARPE and PRODUCE, the SNP has developed a series of measures to reduce the incidence of juveniles in the catches.

In recent years, the fishing regulations have emphasized the relevance of the fact that in a timely manner boats report the areas of high presence of juveniles so that the Ministry of Production closes the said fishing zone.

As a complement to this effort, since the beginning of the second season of 2015, the SNP has set a system for monitoring and controlling juvenile incidence so that the boats move to other fishing areas when juvenile concentrations are detected above what is allowed.

"The fishing industry recognizes that there is no intention to fish for juveniles in open areas but this is inevitable, and it is punishable when the authority is not informed in a timely manner or fishing takes place in closed areas due to high incidence of juveniles," concluded Conterno.

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