American marine biologist Ray Hilborn, professor at the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington, in the United States, said that fishing Peruvian anchovy production is sustainable and can be an example for other fishing industries in the world.
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He explained that one of the aspects in which industrial anchovy fishing has been quite innovative is the use of commercial fishing boats to collect information on the distribution and abundance of the resource.
“In this way, there are a large number of research vessels that travel through the waters of Peru counting anchovies, and that is a model that could be replicated in many, many, other fisheries,” said the North American expert.
The second aspect that other industries could copy from the Peruvian case is the control of the catch that is adjusted according to the abundance of anchovy. This mechanism sets a floor below which all anchovy catch is automatically stopped.
It should be noted that the anchovy population in Peru has remained stable at around 9.2 million tons in the last 15 years, after a quota fishing policy was approved in 2009.
On the other hand, the specialist said that the environmental impact of industrial anchovy fishing is much lower when compared to other products in the maintenance of aquaculture. The aquaculture industry in the world uses anchovy meal as the main food for fish, and replacing it with another type of food, such as soy, would require about 30,000 square kilometers of crop production.
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