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Peru Fishing
Peru's rich fishery has been utilized since ancient
times,
but it was not until the post-World War II decades that an
extensive export industry developed. Peru's fishing
industry
rapidly expanded in the 1950s to make the country the
world's
foremost producer and exporter of fish meal. Although a
large
variety of fish are caught offshore, the rapid growth was
primarily in the catching of anchovies for processing into
fish
meal. The fish meal boom provided a major stimulus to the
economy
and accounted for more than a quarter of exports in the
mid1960s .
In the 1960s, however, there were indications that the
nation's offshore fishing area was being overfished.
Experts
estimated that the fish catch should be about 8 to 9
million tons
a year if overfishing was to be avoided. In 1965 the
government
attempted to limit the annual fish catch to 7 million tons
but
without success, partly because investments in ships and
processing facilities greatly exceeded that level. By the
late
1960s, a finite resource was being depleted. In 1970 the
anchovy
catch peaked at over 12 million tons.
Peru's rich fishing grounds are largely the result of
the
cold offshore Humboldt Current (Peruvian Current) that
causes a
welling up of marine and plant life on which the fish feed
(see Natural Systems and Human Life
, ch. 2). Periodically, El
Niño
(The Christ-child), a warm-water current from the north,
pushes
farther south than normal and disrupts the flow of the
Humboldt
Current, destroying the feed for fish. In such years, the
fish
catch drops dramatically. The intrusion of El Niño
occurred in
1965, 1972, and 1982-83, for example. The 1972 catch, a
quarter
its peak size, contributed to a crisis in the fish meal
industry
and the disappearance of fish meal as a leading Peruvian
export
during most of the 1970s.
In 1973 the government nationalized fish processing and
marketing. However, the fish industry became a large drain
on the
government budget as the national fish company paid off
former
owners for their nationalized assets, reduced excess
capacity,
and processed a meager catch of less than 4 million tons.
Partly
to reduce the drain on revenue, in 1976 the government
sold the
fishing fleet back to private enterprise. Emphasis was
also
shifted away from fish meal, mainly from anchovies, to
edible
fish and exports of canned and frozen fish products.
The fishing industry recovered in the late 1970s, but
the
return of El Niño in 1982-83 devastated the industry until
the
mid-1980s. By 1986 the total fish catch exceeded 5.5
million tons
and by 1988, 5.9 million tons, with exports of fish meal
valued
at US$379 million. The 1989 catch totaled 10 million tons,
an
increase of 34 percent over 1988, and fish meal exports
were
worth US$410 million. In late 1991, Congress passed a
decree that
eliminated all restrictions and monopolies on the
production and
marketing of fish products and encouraged investment in
the
industry.
Data as of September 1992
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