Peruvian Anchoveta Industry

ABSTRACT

The outstanding features of the Peru upwelling

system are high productivity and great variability.

No large changes in the parameters of the anchoveta

population were detected in the fishery and survey

data analyzed in studies done before 1972, but

because of deficiencies in the data such changes may

have occurred and gone undetected. These studies

might have been adequate in a less variable fishery,

and even in the anchoveta fishery were useful in that

they prevented an excessive increase in fishing

effort. But because they did not allow for the

possibility of large changes in the behavior of the

population, they were of little value when

recruitment failed in 1972. The stock’s collapse in

that year and its apparent failure to recover since are

still not understood. In the light of this experience,

future studies and management of anchoveta

fisheries should take into account the potential for

large changes in the parameters of the fish

populations and in the meaning of the usual fishery

statistics and survey data.

INTRODUCTION

Because of upwelling, the coastal waters of Peru

are among the world’s most productive. The chief

direct consumer of this immense planktonic

production is the Peruvian anchoveta, Engraulis

ringens Jenyns, and it in turn is the chief forage item

of the region’s higher level consumers, including fish,

birds, and marine mammals. In some years the

normal processes of production and consumption are

interrupted when upwelling ceases and warm

surface waters advance to the coast with lethal

effects on the native biota, a phenomenon called El

Nino.

In the absence of a large market, no large scale

fishery developed to exploit Peru’s marine

production until the second world war, when high

demand and low supplies in the United States and

elsewhere offered large profits from the export of

canned tuna and bonito. After the war, as normal

fishing operations resumed in the former belligerent

countries, Peruvian exports were steadily displaced

from foreign markets by cheaper domestic products,

and in Peru the boats and factories that had been

built during the war were increasingly idle.

Reduction plants had been installed in the canning

factories to make fish meal from the leavings of the

canning process, and beginning about 1950 some

factory owners resorted to buying anchoveta for

reduction to cut their losses when the canning lines

were idle. This incidental activity soon became

profitable in itself as world demand for fish meal

increased and other supplies declined, in particular

the California sardine. As new boats and plants

entered the industry, the catch of anchoveta grew

exponentially, doubling each year from 100,OOO tons

in 1955 to 3.3 million tons in 1960 (Boerema and

Gullard, 1973).

At this point the