In 2022, Chile exported 160,400 tons. of salmon to Japan, worth US$ 1.208 billion, which represented a 17% increase in profits and a 1% increase in volume compared to the previous year. Salmon and trout are the main export products from Chile to Japan, making Japan the second-largest buyer of these products with 17.7% of the total salmon production.

The Chilean inland sea where these salmon are farmed is the largest of the three fjord zones on the planet and contains unique ecosystems with high marine biodiversity—mainly corals, mammals, and seabirds—considered important for global conservation (WWF, 1995, TNC-USAID, 1999/Nitklisheck, 2017). South of the Taitao Peninsula (46°30′00″S 74°25′00″W), this coastline is identified as a unique ecoregion globally (TNC-USAID, 1999).

In this sea, there are fourteen practically unknown ecosystems (Häussermann, 2022), home to a great diversity of cetaceans, and it is the most important area for the population of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) in the southern hemisphere (Hucke, 2003). This sea is being irresponsibly and destructively exploited by the fishing and mega salmon farming industry, with the support, complicity, and subsidies of the State for only the past four decades.

It is evident that responsible Japanese consumers are unaware that the salmon and trout they consume from Chile are an industrial chemical product intensively farmed in cage rafts. These species—Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)—are carnivorous fish species from the northern hemisphere, introduced into Chilean waters for commercial purposes and are considered invasive species under the Ministry of the Environment’s Biodiversity Strategy.

Certainly, they are also unaware that these marine farms involve the intensive use of antibiotics, chemicals to pigment their flesh for marketability, pesticides, antifouling substances, antifungals, and pellets containing fishmeal from wild species such as jack mackerel, anchovy, sardine, or mackerel, which could be destined for human consumption by Chileans. Their diet also includes genetically modified soy.

The increasing organic pollution from uneaten food and feces that settle on the seabed, combined with the chemical contamination and plastic waste, affects the coastal ecosystems of the southern inland sea. According to a study by the Huinay Center, this pollution reduced marine biodiversity in the fjord areas by 75% over the last ten years (Häussermann, 2022).

Japanese consumers are also unaware that 50% of these industrial salmon farms in the Aysén and Magallanes regions of Patagonia are located in national parks, nature sanctuaries, and protected areas, or that 40% of them are owned by foreign companies, including the Japanese transnationals Cermaq/Mitsubishi, Multi X/Mitsui, and Salmones Antártica/Nissui. Meanwhile, 40% of the salmon farming concessions granted by the Chilean State are mortgaged to Norwegian, Danish, and Chilean banks, while the salmon industry uses only 30% of its concessions, demonstrating the speculative nature of this mega export-oriented aquaculture industry.

Currently, the salmon farming industry organizations are conducting an aggressive campaign of intimidation against environmental and human rights organizations, as well as disinformation, political pressure, and lobbying to continue their territorial expansion and avoid being removed from national parks and protected wilderness areas.

In fact, south of the Chacao Channel, the so-called «Salmon State» operates, imposing its control over territories, coastal communities, and local authorities. During this season, the salmon export industry is sabotaging the implementation of the newly established National Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service Law, as well as the creation of new Coastal Marine Spaces for Indigenous Peoples (EMCPOs), attempting to modify the law that creates them (Lafkenche Law) in parliament.

We call on responsible and socially and environmentally sensitive Japanese citizens and consumers not to consume Chilean industrial chemical salmon production, thereby supporting the struggle of citizen, environmental, human rights organizations, coastal communities, and indigenous peoples against the bad practices and abuses of the salmon industry and in favor of respecting life in the southern seas of Chile.

• Given to PEACE BOAT in 2024 and on board in February 2025.