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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,...