Photo: Revista Puerto
Squid season begins in the north today
ARGENTINA
Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 00:10 (GMT + 9)
In the CFP (Federal Fisheries Council) minutes published on Friday, in addition to confirming the postponement of the prawn prospecting to April 12, the early opening of the northern sector for illex squid was approved due to the demand from companies due to the almost zero catches in the south. They do not expect a good year.
As of March 17, 74,058 tons of illex squid had been unloaded according to official data. The catches are higher than those obtained in 2020 but the daily yields have fallen drastically and from the business sector they asked the Federal Fisheries Council to advance the opening of the northern sector. After consulting INIDEP, the councilors gave their approval and the fishing activities will begin as of today.
The chambers –CAPA, CAPA that groups the jigger ship owners and CAPECA, the freezer vessels– requested the early opening of the season in the northern sector, arguing that “less than two months after the opening of the southern area, the catches of the fleets that remain in the same are scarce or nil "and they added that authorizing them to move north" would allow them to alleviate this situation."
The councilors, after consulting INIDEP, unanimously decided to order the early opening of the harvest season for the squid species (Illex argentinus), north of the 44th parallel of South latitude, starting at zero hour on March 22, 2021.
Photo: Revista Puerto
The catches in January, according to official statistics, were 10,000 tons, double what was discharged in 2020; almost 41 thousand tons were caught in February, about 2 thousand tons below what was caught last year. As for March, the catches were higher this year: while in 2020 as of March 31, 17 thousand tons had been declared, as of March 17 of this year, landings had already reached 23 thousand tons.
Although the catches were better, they were not maintained and in the last weeks they fell drastically. From the jigger sector they are not optimistic about the 2021 season and believe that they will not be able to reach the capture levels that made the mollusk the saving species of last year.
Of course, at the moment they are only speculations because the evaluation campaign has not yet been carried out to know the abundance of the North Patagonian Buenos Aires stock that is evaluated every year in April. Month in which the INIDEP vessel Angelescu is scheduled to set sail.
Photo: Revista Puerto
CAPA has been requesting the Council to convene the Squid Monitoring Commission. Among the issues that the jigging sector is interested in addressing is the rescheduling of season openings both to the south and north, given that in recent years their early opening has been authorized, endorsed by INIDEP. Another issue is the discontinuity in the research campaigns and the intention to set the December campaign within the schedule.
Claudia Carozza, Director of Research at INIDEP, at the time of the interview conducted by Revista Puerto, assured that it does not represent an inconvenience from the point of view of the investigation and that on the contrary she contributes a greater knowledge about the resource; But it is very difficult to sustain it if you do not have the economic contribution of the companies. This situation will surely also be part of the topics for discussion at the next Commission meeting, which has no date yet.
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