- Fishing pens are considered sustainable fishing method and have been used in Chile’s Patagonian region since pre-Columbian times.
- Residents of the Huequi Peninsula have restored a fishing pen and discovered that it no longer catches the hundreds of fish it once did.
- They’re seeking to protect the Comau and Reñihué fjords, which are threatened by the fishing and aquaculture activity.
- They’ve applied for designation of the waters in the two fjords as a Marine Coastal Space for Indigenous Peoples, but the process, which is supposed to take three years at most, has now dragged on for five years.
In southern Chile’s Huequi Peninsula, residents recently built a fishing pen meant to catch hundreds of fish that feed entire communities. They’d already noticed that fish stocks were declining, and when they rebuilt the pen to revive ancestral fishing practices, they confirmed their ecosystem’s deterioration.
Here, in Chilean Patagonia, fishing pens are built with stone or wood in areas that are exposed at low tide. When the water rises, fish and other marine species enter these areas, and become trapped inside the pens when the water recedes.
“It is not like it used to be,” says Walter Barrientos, a 58-year-old farmer and fisherman. He says that when he was a child, a pen would catch between 50 and 100 Patagonian blennies (Eleginops maclovinus). On lucky days, there would be around 2,000 jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi).
“Now everything has changed, everything is different, because of all the boats, all the motorboats, all the people who have indiscriminately taken the fish,” Barrientos says.
“That is why we need to protect, that is why we need to find ways to repopulate,” says Juan Catín, president of the Buill Indigenous community. In 2019, the community submitted an application for a Marine and Coastal Space for Indigenous Peoples (ECMPO).
This would allow the Indigenous community and neighboring towns to protect 66,000 hectares (163,000 acres) of waters in the two fjords of Comau and Reñihué. The ECMPO, although not yet approved, has already been named Weki-Wil. Weki is the name of the peninsula that juts out between the two fjords (spelled Huequi for administrative purposes), and the name Wil comes from Willi, the original name of the Buill cove, which means “south” in Mapudungún, the language spoken by the Mapuche-Williche people.
Pre-Columbian fishing pens
“When Juan Catín told me they wanted to bring back the old ways, I suggested restoring the pen,” Barrientos says. This fishing technique isn’t part of the Indigenous community’s culture, but rather his own family’s tradition. However, according to Ricardo Álvarez, an anthropologist at the Austral University of Chile, the practice of building fish pens has been around since pre-Columbian times.
In fact, he says, the province of Chiloé, where the community is located, has the highest number of fishing pens per kilometer of coastline in the world. In 2008, Álvarez recorded more than 1,000 stone fishing pens in the region, not counting the wooden ones, which have rotted away over the years and with the tides.
Barrientos’ grandparents built the family’s pen with branches from native trees. Later, his parents and uncles maintained it. When they caught hundreds of fish, the family would call in neighbors and friends to share the catch. But as catches declined over the years, the pen fell into disrepair.
In 2022, scientists warned of the “worrying” degradation of the Comau and Reñihué fjords due to the impacts of high volcanic activity in the area and salmon farming. According to research by Mongabay Latam, the Comau-San Ignacio de Huinay Marine Protected Area had five salmon farms as of 2021.
Salmon farms cultivate thousands of the carnivorous fish in giant cages in cold-water seas. Their feces and uneaten fish feed rain down continuously to the seabed, contaminating the water column and triggering hypoxia, or a severe depletion of oxygen in the water, often killing sea life. Barrientos says the industry is also responsible for dumping waste into the ocean every day.
New threats in Huequi
A new threat emerged when Huequi locals learned that the Chilean government was about to grant mussel farming concessions over 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres).
“Seventy percent of the area was fjords where we live,” Catín says. He adds there was never any notification, let alone an effort to obtain the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) with the Indigenous populations or other communities about the entry of this industry into the maritorio, or local marine territory, as he calls it.
They were also surprised that while locals had been waiting about five years for a half-hectare (1.2-acre) concession, the government had granted such a large concession for industrial mussel farming, which is carried out on buoys in the water.
“We did not accept it and looked for a way to stop it,” Catín says. They held meetings with representatives of local agencies responsible for managing both fjords, and agreed to submit an ECMPO application. Created in 2008, the mechanism enables Indigenous communities to protect natural resources for their customary uses.
Some 3,000 people live on the peninsula, and although most don’t belong to Indigenous communities, there was local support for the Indigenous community of Buill to apply for the ECMPO. The government accepted the application in 2020. While it’s being processed, no concessions can be granted, allowing the communities to halt the mussel farming industry for now.
Catín says this community governance tool will allow residents to make decisions about how aquaculture and fishing industries operate in their territories.
“They will have to come down to the local level and talk to the people,” he says.
If the community obtains approval for the Weki-Wil ECMPO, local organizations will have to create a working group to develop a coastal management plan.
“We are not seeking ownership of the sea, but rather a way to preserve it for the future,” Catín says.
Attacks on coastal areas
Although the law governing ECMPOs stipulates that the process should not take more than three years, the inhabitants of Huequi have been waiting for five. The application is currently in the customary use accreditation phase. This is only the third of eight steps, which means that the process will take longer than stipulated under the law.
Yohana Coñuecar, commissioner for Indigenous peoples at the Regional Commission for the Use of the Coastal Zone (CRUBC) in the Los Lagos region, of which Huequi is a part, says the process in reality takes at least seven years. Some applications have taken up to 12 years, only to be rejected in the end, according to Álvarez.
Mongabay Latam asked Chile’s Undersecretary of Fisheries (Subpesca) about the reason for the delay in processing applications, but received no response. Coñuecar says that Subpesca “does not have enough budget to hire more people to work on coastal issues.”
The National Indigenous Development Corporation, which is responsible for accrediting customary uses, faces the same problem. “Although this government has allocated a few more staff, it is not enough to provide timely responses,” it says. By the time an application gets to the military for its approval, as the authority responsible for administer coastal space, the process can take up to five more years.
In the regional commissions, although the time frames are shorter, there is a lack of representation. In the CRUBC in Los Lagos, only two of the 56 representatives are from Indigenous communities. Most members are government delegates, local officials, or representatives of the aquaculture industry.
According to Álvarez, the anthropologist, “there are attacks on Indigenous coastal areas that generally come from actors associated with the exploitation of nature.” The situation worsened in 2023, when a bill was introduced to amend the ECMPO law, with the aim of “harmonizing and reconciling customary uses of the coastline with other activities carried out in the same areas.”
“The law is on hold because of political, industrial and economic powers that want to get their hands on it,” Catín says. He adds the salmon farming industry has launched a misinformation campaign focused on portraying coastal areas as a threat to economic growth and employment. “There is a big difference between the economic and political power of the industries and ours. It is hard work that is being done,” he says.
The delays are causing uncertainty among coastal residents, especially among those who aren’t part of Indigenous communities. Until a decision is made on the request, locals can’t apply for permits to harvest shellfish, which is hurting them financially. However, Catín says these tensions “have been handled well.”
Barrientos is among these non-Indigenous locals who says he supports the process, despite the delay. “If things are not done right now, in a few years there will be nothing left,” he says.
Álvarez says the ECMPO concept has the potential to be a successful conservation mechanism, but even those that have been approved still face “many difficulties.”
Rescuing ancestral practices to preserve
Catín says locals want to protect the long-held traditions of shore-based fishing and gathering, artisanal fishing, and seasonal or tidal work. These practices only target certain species. Large fishing fleets, however, sometimes use trawls, a fishing gear that catches fish indiscriminately and damages the seabed.
According to Álvarez, intensive fishing since the 1980s has led to a decline in “the giant schools of fish that used to be trapped in fishing pens.”
Until about 25 years ago, when the tide rose, fish would approach the pens in search of food. Once the water receded, they were trapped, providing food for entire families and communities. Now, whatever fish remain are scant. But the fishing pen helps preserve memory, showcase culture, and strengthen ties among the inhabitants of the area.
Barrientos says he’s excited to teach new generations about this forgotten fishing technique. Once he made the proposal, five young people from the Indigenous community of Buill joined him to rebuild the pen. During low tide, they drove stakes into the ground and braided the wooden poles.
Once it was ready, schoolchildren came to see it. Álvarez says preserving and restoring the pens is important because they represent ethical norms about what the sea is, how to use it, and how to share it. They’re also sustainable fishing methods, he says.
“I fed myself from that pen for many years,” Barrientos says, “so I think it is good to wait for the coastal space issue to be resolved, so that one day it will not all come to an end.”
Banner image of people gathering shellfish in the bay, courtesy of Juan Catín.
This story was first published here in Spanish on April 4, 2025.
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