MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina bans hake and squid fisheries; Auditing office confirms over-fishing

INIDEP and the Federal Fisheries Council accused of inefficient and lack of proper controls

Argentina suspended the hake season in the south of Patagonia and banned squid operations following on scientific reports of over fishing that have considerably limited catches of both species said industry sources following an official audit which questions government fisheries controls.

The Federal Fisheries Council banned hake fishing for thirty days beginning last Monday, and the previous week advanced three months the closure of the squid season. Both decisions follow “evidence of the existence of a diminished biomass of the resource” for hake and in the case of squid a ‘consensus’ from the companies involved in the fishery to call it a day.

Fishing companies, many of them associated with Spanish consortiums have repeatedly complained about the lack of controls and the inefficiency of the National Institute for Fisheries Research and Development, INIDEP, which as happened with the Federal Fisheries Council have been objected by Argentina’s National General Auditing Office, that checks on government departments and dependencies.

The hake fishery to the south of parallel 40 was closed on evidence that a majority of catches included mostly juveniles even when the allowable catch for this year had been reduced to 145.000 tons.

Industry sources blamed problems with squid on the ‘illegal’ competition from Chinese and Korean fleets licensed by the Falklands/Malvinas government that ‘invade’ Argentine jurisdiction.

“This year they are back and in big numbers which means they are having a very good catch season in the Malvinas zone”, complained Guillermo Jacob president of the Chamber of Fishing and Cold Storage vessels.

Jacob however also revealed that the Argentine industry lives in ‘uncertainty’ because there is a clear deterioration in the technical data provided to determine the annual catch volumes.

The squid season was closed when only 52.222 tons had been landed mostly in February and March.

According to INIDEP the squid biomass is down to almost 45.000 tons but the national Auditing office argues that INIDEP lacks the sufficient funds to comply with its responsibilities which are to monitor the evolution of fishery resources and to help with conservation.

The National Auditing Office 122 pages report released last February warns that squid and hake have been exploited to at least 10% below their recommended scientific limits mostly because of undeclared, unreported and uncontrolled fishing.

Furthermore the scientific research reports are released with “considerable” delay of several months which means that most of the year catch volumes are “provisional”.

The report also calls for a significant improvement of control systems “favouring transparency” particularly regarding hake in the north coast of Argentina, next to Uruguay with which there is a joint administration of resources.

Last year Argentina’s exports of fish and sea food totalled 1.3 billion USD, of which squid represented 120 million USD.