Petri dishes of an archipelago: the ecological rubble of the Chilean salmon farming industry

Andrew Gerhart

doi:10.2458/v24i1.20963

Abstract

Abstract This article narrates part of the history of salmon flu in the Chilean salmon industry, and attempts to tie together environmental history and political ecology in order to reveal the complicated non-human and human collectives that constitute its "ecological rubble." It draws from ethnographic and archival research to show the views among salmon farm workers and local Chilotes who both supported and contested the industry in contradictory ways. Amidst a milieu of technocratic narratives of control, and blindness to nonhuman agencies, they themselves became simultaneously part of new forms of ecological rubble: hidden harms the industry brought to their archipelagic home. I argue that only through an awareness of these hidden collectives of both material and human social relations can we hope to weather the storms of production and destruction that industrial aquaculture births at sea. Key words: environmental history, aquaculture, disease, agriculture, salmon farming, Latin America, Chile.

Highlights

This article narrates part of the history of salmon flu in the Chilean salmon industry, and attempts to tie together environmental history and political ecology in order to reveal the complicated non-human and human collectives that constitute its "ecological rubble." It draws from ethnographic and archival research to show the views among salmon farm workers and local Chilotes who both supported and contested the industry in contradictory ways
Soy bastante categórico en afirmar que la enfermedad propiamente tal no existe en Chile. [I am quite emphatic that the disease as such does not exist in Chile.] José Miguel Burgos, Chief of Health, SernaPesca (Aquanoticias, 2001)
Just as the mosaic disease in Caribbean sugar or the Panama disease fungus in Honduran bananas were the product of monoculture industries that bred exotic pathogens intensively, Chilean salmon farming did the same, resulting in the repaid spread of infectious salmon anemia (ISA)

Summary

Introduction: the Chilean salmon flu

Soy bastante categórico en afirmar que la enfermedad propiamente tal no existe en Chile. [I am quite emphatic that the disease as such does not exist in Chile.] José Miguel Burgos, Chief of Health, SernaPesca (Aquanoticias, 2001). A combined outbreak of sea lice and Rickettsia was impossible to avoid at industrial salmon farming densities in Chile. Chilean salmon farmers budgeted for deterrents to offset their losses, and fought these losses with drugs They started with insecticide baths using emamectin benzoate to kill the sea lice and to try to preempt the bacterial explosions. In 2007 Chile put 387,000 kg of antibiotics into its marine environment; in 2014 it put 563,200 kg (Asche et al 2010; Norwegian Institute of Public Health 2009; Esposito 2015) On this June winter day in 2007, the divers and technicians at the Marine Harvest farm noted a strange and sudden 62% increase in mortality among their already heavily medicated fish (Godoy et al 2008). By 2009 over 20,000 people had lost their jobs, and the industry lost over US$2 billion dollars

Situating cyclical failure and searching for ecological rubble

Contesting rubble

Complicated cycles of nostalgia

The invisibility of ecological rubble

Findings

Conclusion: hybridized collectives of ecological rubble