Photo: Bogavante II / Revista Puerto

Argentine shrimp campaign will begins on Friday

ARGENTINA
Wednesday, March 03, 2021, 07:00 (GMT + 9)

The survey of the Golfo San Jorge in the Argentine Atlantic Coast, national waters and the coast of the province of Chubut will allow knowing when will be the right time to start the 2021 season, depending on the abundance and size of the specimens. According to the latest data, it would start in June.

With the commercial vessel Bogavante Segundo, usually assigned to evaluate the resource, the summer shrimp campaign will begin on March 5. Through this survey, it will be known if the high level of abundance observed at the end of last year is maintained and what the size of the specimens is, relevant data to determine the start of the season in national waters in 2021.

The campaign plan, which will last 20 days, will seek to verify the presence of concentrations of shrimp accessible and vulnerable to the commercial tangonera network in the area located west of the 64º meridian and between the parallels of 43º 10 'and 47º 15 'South. The spatial distribution of the mature and impregnated females will be analyzed and the indices of fertility, maturation and size at first maturity will be estimated. Bycatch quantification and sampling will also be carried out, at the same time that zooplankton samples will be taken to locate prawn eggs and larvae.

The ten INIDEP scientists and two provincial representatives will set sail from the Ingeniero White port in the Argentine city of Bahía Blanca and will have five days of navigation and fifteen days of data collection work.

Photo: Revista Puerto

Once the information is analyzed, the researchers will be in a position to give an estimate of the start of the season. According to the data collected in the last campaign of last year, the abundance of the resource had given a good sign since very abundant tags were found in the Bahía Camarones area (Argentina), although the size of the specimens was still as small as the observed in 2019.

The maturation development of the shrimp that they observed then, led the biologists to conclude that it would be probable that this year the start of the season would be delayed again; therefore, expectations of starting in May are low. Most likely, as in 2020, the first ships will be able to leave in June for national waters. Only an extraordinary situation with a higher temperature in the water and an abundance of food could change the course of what was expected, but that scenario is considered unlikely.

Source: Revista Puerto (article available only in Spanish)

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