Giant squid, Dosidicus gigas. (Photo: Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture)

Landes warns giant squid bill will be devastating for industrial sector

CHILE
Wednesday, October 10, 2018, 01:50 (GMT + 9)

The industrial sector and artisanal fishermen are waiting expectantly for the decision of the Chilean senators on the bill that states that the giant squid can only be caught with "jiggers" or "hand lines", and that it would prohibit any other type of fishing gear.

This bill, now in the second legislative process, will be voted on Tuesday in the Senate Chamber, and if approved, it will become law.

Fishing company Landes, in particular, estimates that if the bill prospers, there will be an "earthquake" in the industrial sector, and warns that it will be delivering the fishing heritage of the giant squid to the Peruvian and Chinese fleets, El Mercurio reported.

For their part, the artisanal fishermen maintain that the exclusion of industrial capture methods and the trawling method would be "a historical fact, since a resource that is the heritage of all Chileans will be protected.”

Meanwhile, unofficially it was released that the Government would go to the Constitutional Court, considering that only the Executive has the power to restrict a certain fishing gear.

Landes argues that the artisanal sector, which currently fishes some 160,000 tonnes of giant squid in Chile, will not be able to capture the 40,000 tonnes extracted by the industry, which is why the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), which will shortly regulate this fishery, will reduce the quota assigned to Chile.

The company general manager Andrés Fosk states that the presence of Peru, which fishes between 400,000 and 600,000 tonnes per year, and of China, which catches about one million tonnes of this cephalopod, will be strengthened.

According to Fosk, a third of the sales and margins of this firm are linked to the activity of the giant squid, and in the next season they will not be able to hire 200 people again if the bill advances. In addition, they would be forced to dismiss a hundred workers linked to the trawling equipment and leave two vessels without operations.

The company, which has its operational base in Talcahuano, also operates in the fishmeal and fish oil segment, and in the production of mussels, and has annual sales of around USD 65 million.

Regarding the entire Chilean fishing industry, Fosk predicts that up to 3,000 jobs could be lost if the bill becomes law, while other projections in the sector indicate that some 2,000 direct jobs and another 4,000 indirect jobs would disappear during the season from January to August.

"This will have an extraordinarily relevant effect on the sustainability and future of the company. Once again we are facing a new earthquake, this time in the legislature, we had one in 2010, when we stood up, now we will have to reinvent ourselves to see where we started working," Fosk told El Mercurio.

The entrepreneur insists that the bill is unconstitutional because Parliament can not regulate the fishing gear. In addition, he argues that scientific approaches have not been taken into account, nor in the case of giant squid, trawling is "half water" and does not affect the seabed.

Related article:

- Project limiting giant squid capture to be voted in the Senate
- Industrial sector crewmen and captains criticize politicians for 'giant squid bill'
- Undersecretary explains Executive’s opposition to giant squid bill

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