Chile

Promoting ocean transparency together

Our collaboration with Chile formally began in May 2019 when the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service of Chile, or SERNAPESCA, agreed to publish its fishing vessel data on the Global Fishing watch map. With this decision, Chile reinforced its commitment to fisheries transparency and expressed a desire to support scientific research and better understand the fishing activity taking place throughout its waters.

Since March 2020, more than 2,200 vessels from the Chilean industrial and artisanal fleets, including transport and aquaculture vessels, are visible on the Global Fishing Watch map.

With roughly 4,000 miles (6,000 kilometers) of coastline, Chile is a country with enormous marine wealth and high-value fisheries such as anchovy, sardines, and hake. Chile is the 8th largest fishing nation in the world, responsible for approximately $6 billion in annual exports of seafood and the direct employment of 130,000 people.

Over the years, Chile has become a leader in fisheries transparency. In 2019, the Chilean Senate passed a law to modernize SERNAPESCA, mandating the use and publication of vessel monitoring system (VMS) data, which is used to track domestic fishing activity. Once this provision was implemented, Global Fishing Watch was able to directly support Chile by publishing this information on our map.

Chile is one of eleven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that has created a network to combat illlegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and help promote an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation roadmap to curb such activity.

The government has also created marine protected areas covering almost 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers) of water, representing 40 percent of the country’s waters. Chile is one of the few nations that has exceeded the international goal of safeguarding 30 percent of the ocean through protected waters, which has been recommended by scientists to strengthen the health of the oceans.

sharingdata

Sharing fishing vessel data

since March 2020

embarcaciones_monitoreadas

2,200+

monitored vessels

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4,000 miles

coastline

How we support Chile

Global Fishing Watch provides actionable information to Chilean authorities to make the most informed ocean policy and management decisions.

Besides training Chilean officials in the use of its technological platform, we continue to provide the Chilean government with analysis reports to quantify the amount of fishing that is occurring in the artisanal fishing reserve area and the artisanal fishing effort for anchovy in the northern and southern regions of the country. We also provide expert analyses for  SERNAPESCA to help them better understand the behavior of the foreign squid fleet that transits through the country’s waters each year.

Recent work
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