Fish farming (aquaculture) is a billion dollar industry in Chile. Shellfish (mussels, Pacific oysters, & scallops) seaweeds as well as trout and salmon are all farmed here. In fact about 95 % of Chile’s aquaculture industry focuses on trout and salmon which are raised in pens on the southern coast of the country and then sold on the international market. You will not find fish farms on the northern coast of Chile because it is open directly to the Pacific but as you make your way down the coast you eventually reach the protected waters of the southern fjords (much like BC’s inside passage). There amongst the protected channels and inside waters you can see a great number of fish farms (that are raising the trout and salmon) as well as the associated fish processing facilities. The species raised in Chile are Atlantic, Chinook (King), and Coho (Silver) salmon and Rainbow trout.

One would think (at least I did originally) that fish farming is a good thing. The human population on the planet continues to grow, and with more and more mouths to feed we need to find sustainable ways to provide high quality food to the human population.

Then… there is the issue of what the farmed fish are being fed – fish meal. Small bait fish (jack mackerel, anchovy, sardine) are harvested in huge quantities from the ocean off the Chilean coast. These fish are then processed and converted into fish meal which is used to feed the trout and salmon being raised in the fish pens. The fish meal though is not just fed to pen raised salmon in Chile, it is fed to farm raised fish in many parts of the world (Canada, Norway, Scotland, etc). In 2004 the value of the export of these bait fish to the Chilean economy was half a billion dollars!

Do you think there is a relationship between the fish farms in British Columbia and penguins in South America? If you would like to find out, read a brief article by Rafe Mair at:

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/01/22/FishFarms/

If you want to know more about aquaculture (fish farming) in general you can do a Google search with words such as aquaculture, fish farming, salmon, concerns (and put in the different regions such as British Columbia, or Chile, or Norway).