Hake fishing. (Photo: Subpesca)
CHILE
Thursday, August 14, 2014, 03:20 (GMT + 9)
The director of the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (SERNAPESCA), José Miguel Burgos, expressed a strong rejection to illegal hake fishing, a resource that is now overfished and for which within weeks there will be a reproductive ban coming into force.
"They're depleting the hake," warned the official, who also made it clear that the Government is strengthening controls and inspection throughout the entire production chain, especially in the inter-regional roads.
Burgos highlighted that during the morning on 12 August, SERNAPESCA's staff from the regions of Maule, Metropolitana and Valparaiso, surprised five transport operators trying to sell a total of 11,500 kilograms of hake without legal documentation.
This operation follows another one performed last Saturday in Concepcion, Bío Bío Region, where 2.5 tonnes of the resource were detected, reported SERNAPESCA.
Burgos explained that the seized specimens in these checks come from the creeks of the Maule Region, such as Pellines, Iloca and Constitución.
At present, this resource is declared as overexploited fishery so the authorized quotas for 2014 declined significantly.
"This is totally useless if people do not become aware of the fact and continue acting illegally on the resource," SERNAPESCA’s director sentenced.
And he added that as the catch is not declared, "in practice it is impossible to know the extent of the fishing effort operating on the hake." For this reason, he stressed that "these practices are not only illegal but they are depleting the resource."
Meanwhile, SERNAPESCA’s director of Valparaiso Region, Marcelo Arredondo, warned that catch volumes are a sign of "a hake extinction in five years" if the authorities do not control the fishing activity.