MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Fisheries News.

Headlines:
INIDEP assesses hake biomass in San Jorge Gulf; Commercial southern hake farming in 2008.

INIDEP assesses hake biomass in San Jorge Gulf

Since January 11 and until the end of the month researchers from the Argentine National Institute for Fisheries Research and Development (INIDEP) are assessing reproductive conditions and volume of common hake in the area gulf of San Jorge area with the purpose of estimating the species' available biomass. The results of the scientific research will help in establishing the maximum allowable catch for the whole of 2005 for common hake.

However other reports will also be taken into account, according to INIDEP research Director, Otto Wohler.

Once the INIDEP scientists submit the final report, Argentine fishing authorities will be able to establish the maximum catch for hake. At the beginning of the year the Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food Secretariat (SAGPyA) temporarily established a 380,000 tonnes TAC of common hake to the fresh fish fleet and the freezer vessels from various Argentine provinces.

But until the final report is not finished probably next March or April, the fishing sector will have to comply with Resolution 1388/04, which assigned 270,000 tonnes to the fresh fish fleet with national licences 80,000 tonnes to the freezer vessels plus and additional 35,000 tonnes for provincial governments distribution in Buenos Aires, Chubut, Rio Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego. (FIS/MP).-

Commercial southern hake farming in 2008

It is quite possible that the Chilean fisheries sector will be able to develop commercial southern hake (Merluccius australis) large-scale farming beginning 2008, announced Alberto Ausburger, the director of Fundación Chile's 'Southern Hake Farming' project. Mr. Ausburger said that the project is currently at the productive scaling phase, from an experimental to a semi-industrial stage.

As part of the initiative, new infrastructure with technological equipment and marine water recirculation systems have been built at the facilities of the Experimental Centre, located in Quillaipe.

"With this new infrastructure and technology, we expect to produce at levels that allow us to carry out fattening tests directly at sea, to a degree that may supply farmed fish in raft cages. That would be more than 40,000 specimens per cage", indicated Mr. Ausburger in an interview with the newspaper "El Centro".

Mr. Ausburger considers the productive parameters achieved so far as "adequate" and the following step is taking them to a larger scale.

"We hope that after these stages, which will last three years, we may have our first industrial hatchery" he added. The project is scheduled to end in 2008.

Last November during the VI Salmon Farming Conference, the directors of the 'Southern Hake Farming' project officially announced they had managed to complete the species' farming cycle, following the spawning in a laboratory for the first time of southern hake. (FIS/MP).-