We were in Puerto Montt, Chile, on the Pacific Coast, a few weeks ago. As usual, I picked up the local paper to read over breakfast, something I try to do daily no matter where I am.

The headlines were all about the closure of some fish farms, owned by a Scandinavian corporation called Marine Harvest. A thousand people were going to leave their jobs.
The closure was being blamed on some mysterious illness that is plaguing the salmon in the area.

This is a place that has seen remarkable economic recovery over the past few years, as has all of Chile. It’s due to resource-based industries like mining, forestry and fish farming. Fishing is the country’s third-largest industry.
Out the window of the 12th-story restaurant where we ate breakfast, I could see a handful of fish farms on the bay - lines of netting in orderly squares.

Turns out the illness is called salmon anemia or ISA and it’s killing thousands of fish.

Ecologists and biologists have long charged the Chilean fish-farming industry with overbreeding in cramped pens, and warning that this would lead to a kind of contamination of both the waters and of the fish, just as we are seeing today. When the fish are stressed and crammed together, parasites and viruses will naturally breed, scientists say. Many fish farms now have to feed antibiotics to the fish regularly to fight off such illnesses. On top of that, many feed fish hormones to aid in growth.
While it seems the virus won’t have any impact on the health of the fish to potential consumers, it’s a red flag to the industry on the damages it is causing ecologically. The fish export business has taken over the marine life. Fish farms strip the ocean of oxygen, killing other marine animals and spreading disease. Salmon that escape from the farms are on missions to flee, and appear to be invading lcoal rivers, spreading the contamination well beyond the farms’ nets.

Well, there is a lot to say about this industrial fishing in Chile - the hope it originally brought and the mess it leaves behind. Keep your eyes out, and be careful what you eat. Here’s hoping that Chile implements stricter regulations, and that fish farming companies clean up their act, and clean up the South Pacific.