Peru seeks to protect little fish with big impact

By FRANKLIN BRICENO and FRANK BAJAK

CALLAO, Peru (AP) _ The ocean off Peru boasts the world’s richest fishing grounds, but Taurino Querevalu is returning to port empty again after a hunt for Peruvian anchovy, cursing his empty nets and an increasingly stingy sea.

A little more than a decade ago, Querevalu’s 8-ton wooden boat rarely returned with an empty hold as it does on this day motoring back to Lima’s port of Callao, the low-slung clouds above as gray as the sea mirroring them.

“There used to be fish for everybody,” the 48-year-old trawler captain laments, leaning on the rail as a stiff breeze buffets his leathery brow. “You’d run into immense schools.”

Peru Overfishing

Querevalu’s frustrated search for the silvery, stiletto-sized fish reflects a voracious, growing global demand for the protein-rich fish meal, and oil, into which nearly Peru’s entire anchovy catch is converted. It also reflects unremitting cheating by commercial fleets on quotas and other regulations designed to protect the species.

Not only has overfishing of the Peruvian anchovy, or anchoveta, battered the industry that makes Peru far and away the world’s No. 1 fish meal exporter, it has also raised alarm about food security in a nation that had long been accustomed to cheap, abundant seafood.

The drop in the anchoveta population has over the years affected the food chain, as stocks of hundreds of bigger wild fish and marine animals that eat it have also thinned.

Read full story at AP Big Story

Peru’s attempt to protect a little fish with a big global impact

The story Franklin Briceno and I did on the Peruvian government’s attempt to begin to effectively police the world’s biggest fishery _ the anchoveta industry _ against misbehavior by the commercial fishing fleet was published precisely as the Production Ministry announced results of this season’s catch.

The day’s headline: The fleet did not catch the full quota of 810,000 metric tons (it reported catching 732,000 tons). In the seventh week of the 10-week season that ended Jan. 31 it began breaking the rules blatantly by catching too many juveniles, which is illegal and endangers regeneration. They illegally harvested more than 18,000 tons of juveniles.

“They have no social conscience,” said vice minister Paul Phumpiu. He is trying to get the industry to divert more of its catch to human consumption but so far doesn’t seem to have much traction.

A pilot project to promote the anchoveta as table fish, chiefly by distributing free samples at markets in Peru, is about to get under way. It’s budget: about $4 million.