– The initiative, which began in 2015 between both parties, seeks to protect birds such as petrels and albatrosses, among others, by making changes to the designs and structures of the purse seine nets of artisanal vessels that use purse seine fishing. 

            Valdivia, April 19, 2023. The fishing and salmon farming company Blumar, together with the NGO BirdLife, announced the implementation of the second phase in the work to minimize the interaction between fishing and seabirds, as a continuation of the alliance signed in 2015. This project contemplates changes in the design and structures of the net, such as the reduction of mesh size in reinforcement areas and zipper, as well as the modification of percentages and new assembly of floats so that birds such as petrels do not get caught in it.

            BirdLife is an international organization that seeks to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources in more than 100 countries.

Following the presentation, the South America coordinator of BirdLife’s marine program, Esteban Frere,  highlighted that “this is a very important project for us, because it is one of the first that we work on jointly with fishing companies, fishermen and government. To contextualize, the purse seine fishery that is developed in Chile has incidental capture of certain birds, which they capture unintentionally, and the idea that we have pursued is to be able to work to minimize and mitigate that problem”.

For his part, Blumar’s fishing operations manager, José Ocares, stated that “this is a project that we have maintained for several years, which began because of the importance we have given to sustainability in our operation. During this time, we have had important advances that would not have been possible without joint work to reduce the gap that existed in this matter. Through engineering and best practices, we were able to generate an improvement that prevents damage, which gives us great satisfaction”.

“Today’s activity is to reaffirm the agreement we have, which started in 2015 with some tests we did in Colonel. Subsequently, in 2017 we consolidated the mitigation, and we moved to Corral which was the closest area and we did the first project with seven vessels. The idea is that we now resume with eight more vessels, to continue working on this”, clarified Blumar’s fleet chief, Roberto Contreras.