Sernapesca detects 3 companies underreporting sea lice data

Christian Pérez According to the information published in the local newspaper El Dínamo, the National Service of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Sernapesca) detected that AquaChile, Mainstream Chile and Holding & Trading reported sea lice abundance levels below of those registered on site by Sernapesca officers. These three companies will be notified about this underreporting practices in the coming days. This detection is in line with the comments of Pablo Galilea, Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture, who said last week that the Government had reasonable suspicion that certain salmon producing companies were not reporting the real sea lice abundances in some of their sites. "We will be much more rigorous in the imposition of fines with those companies presenting false reports of sea lice abundances," he stressed. Likewise, according to the information published in the Chilean newspaper La Segunda, Mr Galilea said that the Authority will also limit the production in those neighborhoods with more than 15 farming sites in order to reduce the number of sites in operation to just 50-70% of the total of sites. Finally, he said that "the salmon producing companies have decided their own production volumes and the truth is that now there is too much fish in the water. This has resulted in an increase of the caligus abundance, parasite that weakens the fish and is a also vector of transmission of ISA virus. Because of this higher number of fish, there is an increased risk of disease."

When a farming site is found with an average abundance of adult lice (Caligus rogercresseyi) equal or higher than 9 parasites per fish, it is declared as a "Site of Large Spread" and according to the new sanitary programme of control and surveillance of Caligus, if a farming site is not able to reduce the abundance of sea lice below 9 adult lice per fish within 6 weeks after notification, there will be a mandatory elimination of 25% of the biomass in that site.