Image: Revista Puerto / FIS

Chubut's Shrimp Season Resumes After One-Month Pause

ARGENTINA
Friday, March 01, 2024, 01:00 (GMT + 9)

Vessels fishing north of Rawson continue to catch shellfish sizes L2 and L1; to the south similar sizes and somewhat smaller. The fishing production chain is slowly resuming. Yesterday, more than thirty boats left and today others would join. The plants and the food union brought positions closer together.

Source: Revista Puerto

At the close of this edition, the Argentine Patagonian Chamber of Fishing Industries (CAPIP) and the Food Industry Workers Union (STIA) were preparing to sign the joint agreement after a month had passed since the activity was paralyzed.

The salary increase values with fixed amounts have been those that the union had been demanding and it would have been planned to annul the disciplinary sanctions for the workers who abandoned their jobs and caused the loss of raw materials; The final text of the agreement would be known in the next few hours.

Source: Revista Puerto

This Wednesday another dynamic was observed in the port of Rawson. More than thirty boats were dispatched to the fishing area to begin supplying different processing plants in the area. Slowly, the commercial circuit and the productive cycle would begin to resume; if there is not another obstacle as has been happening since mid-January.

The shrimp fishery (Pleoticus Muelleri) in Chubut waters had had December 2023 with catches at historic levels, and the same thing happened in January 2024; although after the stoppage of fishing for a month, it will surely prevent this season from concluding with catch rates like those of the previous harvest.

Source: Stockfile FIS

The fleet that has been operating in the last fifteen days continues to find good quality seafood and sizes of commercial interest. To the north of the port of Rawson there continues to be, increasingly dispersed, type L2 and L1 shrimp, which is what the fleet is looking for today and which is what the plants demand. Yesterday, a large part of the fleet that went out fishing was located south of the capital of Chubut, and they also found marks of crustacean of good sizes, although more mixed.

February ended and there would be a month ahead of fishing operations, according to experts in the sector, taking into account the behavior of the resource in recent seasons. Last year it closed on March 31 and there was still fish so it could even be extended this year for a week in April.

Source: Stockfile FIS

However, beyond the fishing operation, it will be necessary to observe how the dynamics of international markets evolve, which have shown a strong contraction in demand, based on the fall in consumption, which led to a depression in prices, and many of the companies with chambers stocked with unmarketed shrimp.

In Chubut there was strong expectation about what would happen with the season that had so many ups and downs, and the political decision of the provincial government was to exhaust all possible avenues to resume it and get back to work. Incredibly, this time they were issues unrelated to the resource, because there are shrimp in provincial waters, and perhaps this one-month stoppage may even have favored the growth of sizes and good size fish continued for several more weeks.

Author: Néstor Saldivia | Revista Puerto  (Translated from the original in Spanish)

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