Elusive Catch: Shifting Marine Ecologies on the Southeast Pacific Fisheries Frontier, 1947–97

After World War II, Peru and Chile rapidly emerged as two of the world’s most important fishing nations. Their most important commodity—fishmeal for animal feed—depended on extracting concentrated proteins from the tiny schooling fishes at the base of the Humboldt Current marine ecosystem. Interconnected booms and busts linked to El Niño and other little-understood oceanographic shifts punctuate the environmental histories of the port cities Chimbote, Iquique, and Talcahuano, where scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers reacted to these shifts through policies that nonetheless reflected their national allegiances and species-specific visions. This paper will explain why the story of fishmeal on the Southeast Pacific fisheries frontier requires a transnational frame, as the resilience of the world’s most productive marine ecosystem and the little-understood relationships among its fishes spawned a geography of industrial development that echoed this ecological dynamism.