This piece was written by TASA's Dereck Zimmermann, as part of IFFO's partnership with Fish First, the Chinese trade media outlet, and oublished in Chinese in August 2020

The marine ecosystem in Peru, located on the edge of the south eastern Pacific Ocean, has the largest presence of pelagic fish in the world, highlighting anchovy as the main hydro biological resource with 75% of national catches and 8% of catches worldwide. To preserve this resource, Peru takes actions to contribute to the sustainable management of the fishing sector through initiatives of public and private organizations and civil society.

The Peruvian fishing company TASA, the largest producer of fishmeal in the world, identified the opportunity to contribute with more information of the ecosystem and at the same time carry out good practices in sustainable fishing and conservation of the marine environment during its fishing operations. For this reason, in 2008, the company founded the sustainable fishing management model, Cuidamar, which incorporates a series of measures and practices within its management, working very close with its crew, to make them agents of marine conservation and change the paradigms in the fishing sector.

Cuidamar has four strategic factors:

• 1. The implementation of a continuous training plan that generates capacities and a culture of sustainable fishing in the crew;
• 2. A continuous monitoring system of the marine ecosystem where sightings of marine fauna, catch composition, oceanographic information, among others are recorded;
• 3. A marine biodiversity management plan where mitigation actions are carried out, such as the application of correct techniques for the release of marine fauna, especially ETP species (endangered, threatened and protected), respect for marine protected natural areas, the generation of self-generated seasons closure in the face of the incidence of juvenile and incidental fishing, among others; and
• 4. The use of recorded data to generate documents and manuals to improve fishing practices.

With the continuous training that the Cuidamar and TASA fishermen receive each year, it has been possible to establish a continuous monitoring system and actions that reflect the awareness of the crew. As of 2019, nearly 95% of the crew has been trained, and since 2008, the same crew has reported more than 100,000 sightings of different groups of species and more than 17,000 individual fish from different species of marine fauna were released, from which 93% were released alive.

The data recorded between sightings and releases, allows the production of investigations that delve into the existing relationship between the appearance of certain species and the variability of the marine ecosystem. In this way, it will be possible to understand the different interactions between marine top predators with the main target fish, behavioral indicators of the fishery, the impact of fishing activity on the ecosystem and mitigate its impact.

Prior to the production of scientific content, it is a priority for TASA to validate each of its registration variables in order to consolidate Cuidamar as a valid source for scientific research and future management plans. A task that is currently ongoing.

Having data and trained personnel allows the development of sustainable fishing, an interest that must be pursued by every government and industry that wants to develop and improve the fishing sector over time. Therefore, all the knowledge of Cuidamar is available to the public on the TASA web portal in a manual, guides and information of interest.