Up until 2007, Chile experienced over 15 years of important growth in its salmon aquaculture, becoming the second largest salmon and
trout producer after
Norway. By 2006 Chile contributed with 38% of the world's salmon volume just behind Norway that produced 39% of it.
Ecological impact Industrial aquaculture firstly sees millions of escapee fish into the native ecosystem every year In October 2018, a major breach at the salmon culture center of Punta Redonda (managed by Marine Harvest) led to the leakage of 690,000 salmon in the country's rivers. Those salmon were treated with
Florfenicol, thus not edible by humans. The unregulated use of chemical compounds, such as antibiotics used to prevent infections, may influence the entire ecosystem as well as copper used as antifouling (Buschmann et al. 2006) and litter (Pumalin, 2008); and the loading of nutrients from aquaculture into the interior sea and lakes and nutrients from large scale mussel farms The industry suffered during the
Great Recession, which coincided with a sudden appearance and outbreak of
infectious salmon anemia in 2007.
Atlantic salmon production in Chile has fallen from 400,000 to 100,000 tonnes from 2005 to 2010. By 2009, a salmon executive expected production to go back to the 2007 levels within four years. The nets of the salmon cages have occasionally killed endangered whales as it happened in 2020 with a
sei whale near
Guaitecas Archipelago.
Harmful algal blooms and industrial salmon aquaculture Studies undertaken by marine biologists aim to verify the link between the waste generated by the salmon industry in the Chilean oceanic waters and the outbreak of the highly toxic
red tide harmful algal blooms in the region. Evidence from Comau Fiord where a Harmful Algal Bloom caused a mass die of cold water coral reefs was directly linked to the eutrophic conditions causing HABs from the Salmon Farms in the area. This was clearer than the open sea being a semi enclosed basin ==Aquaculture and private property rights in the sea==