Chile’s National Fisheries Service (Sernapesca) this month declared a sanitary emergency off the northern coast of the Aysén Region, located in Chilean Patagonia, due to the discovery of the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus in two salmon farms belonging to the companies Marine Harvest and Multiexport. The outbreak caught the industry and local media by surprise, raising fears of another large-scale ISA plague similar to the 2007 outbreak that killed untold amounts of farmed fish and severely crippled the salmon-farming industry here. The industry formerly enjoyed exponential annual export growth, but over the past five years has seen a massive decline in jobs and production. Due to the 2007 ISA crisis, salmon farming operations have in recent years migrated en masse southward from... [Log in to read more]
