Each year since 2021, Pia Reveco and her husband have set sail from Puerto Montt to spend the Chilean summers navigating Patagonia aboard their sailboat. Last year, they traveled along the fjords and mountains of the Golfo de Penas; three years ago, they reached Laguna San Rafael National Park, where a glacier resembling an ice tongue meets the sea. This summer, they opted instead for a shorter trip to the Guaitecas archipelago, a group of sparse islands in the Aysén region known for its rich biodiversity. During these journeys, they report frequently coming across fish farms, mostly salmoneras, Spanish for salmon farms. On their most recent expedition, which ran from December to March, Reveco posted on X about at least 23 sites that appeared to her abandoned or in bad condition, with corroded, broken or sinking infrastructure and teeming with birds, she told Mongabay. A 2021 study published in the science journal Marine Pollution Bulletin identified mussel and salmon aquaculture as primary sources of floating marine debris in northern Chilean Patagonia, especially buoys and other plastic floating devices. Daniel Caniullán, a fishing vessel owner, shellfish gatherer and Indigenous community leader involved in campaigns against the salmon industry, has often documented buoys, sections of rusting platforms and plastic pipes washing ashore on the pristine beaches of the Guaitecas, where he lives. “We, the Indigenous seafaring fishers of this territory, have seen this type of salmon farming pollution in the area for more than 40 years,” Caniullán texted Mongabay. In such remote…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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