by
M.H. Glantz
Head, Environmental and Societal Impacts Group
National Center for Atmospheric Research*
Boulder, Co 80307, USA
* The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Resumen
La pesca no es solo una actividad económica, es también una actividad política, cultural y social. Desde esta perspectiva se identifican algunos de los factores que afectan la implementación de estrategias racionales de ordenación de la explotación de los recursos marinos renovables. Se analizan los diversos factores que influenciaron la explotación de la anchoveta peruana con la finalidad de aplicar esta experiencias en la ordenación de otras pesquerías. Los éxitos y fracasos de la ordenación de la pesca están relacionados con actividades al nivel internacional, al comportamiento de grupos a nivel nacional, y al comportamiento a nivel individual. En este documento se tratan estos tres niveles como categorías de factores distintos que afectan la ordenación pesquera.
INTRODUCTION
Rational fisheries management strategies must compete with a broad spectrum of societal factors that influence the exploitation of marine resources. Fishing is not only an economic activity, but political, cultural, and social as well. Therefore, to understand how a particular fishery has been managed requires investigations by social as well as physical scientists.
The purpose of this paper is to identify some of these factors that might impinge on the implementation of rational management strategies for living marine resources. The focus of this paper will be on pelagic fish in general and the Peruvian anchoveta fishery in particular. This fishery underwent rapid growth and development, beginning in the early 1950's and its history is relatively well documented. The Peruvian anchoveta fishery shares some marine biological as well as oceanographic and climatological characteristics with other eastern boundary current fisheries (e.g., Parrish et al., 1983; Troadec et al., 1980). In addition, Peru shares fisheries management characteristics with other coastal countries that exploit their eastern boundary current fisheries.
Pelagic fish dwell near the surface of the ocean, have high rates of natural mortality, have a highly aggregated distribution, are shoaling forage fish, and are apparently extremely vulnerable to subtle as well as drastic variations in their atmospheric and marine environments. Shoaling pelagic fish are relatively easy to capture with efficient gear and large quantities can be taken in a short period of time. While some species are used as food fish, they are also of commercial value for reduction to fishmeal. Their value as fishmeal stems more from the tonnage of landing than from their bvalue per units of fish. Fishmeal is used a feed supplement, primarily for poultry and livestock. It may be produced from whole fish and other marine organisms not used for human consumption, from by–catches or surplus catches obtained from catches for human consumption, or from fish obtained during the processing of fish (Popiel and Sosinski. 1973).
Fish populations in general have characteristics that set them apart from other living resources. Therefore, analogies made with forests, soils, and renewable resources in general, that sometimes appear in the literature, must be used with great care(e.g., Clark, 1981). Within the fish populations there are species and subspecies which can be set apart from each other according to specific characteristic differences. Careful comparisons between similar species can be a fruitful approach to understanding similar stocks in different regions where some information exists for one region but is available to a lesser extent for other regions. In the absence of perfects information about any single fish stock or fishery, the use of the comparisons for the purpose of identifying analogies can provide valuable insights in to the management of fisheries based on similar stocks (Bakun, et al., 1982 Troadec et al., 1980)
One can find views throughout the fisheries (and more broadly, resource) management literature that relate the successes and failures of renewable resource management to either activities at the international level (“international demands for fishmeal in combination with Peruvian import restrictions sparked the Peruvian production of fishing boats”), group behaviour at the national level (“if you allow an industrial fishery to begin, it will destroy the guano resources”), or individual behaviour (“fishermen want to sink every other boat but their own”).
The framework used in this paper treats these three levels of analysis (the international, the state, and the individual) as three distinct categories of factors that can affect the management of a fishery. By separating these three levels for analytical purposes, such a framework encourages a broader consideration of potentially relevant factors for managing a fishery than just the consideration of fish population dynamics or oceanographic variables that are known to affect marine life. This approcach could lead to the identification of factors that affect management strategies for the Peruvian anchoveta fishery in particular and for other eastern boundary current pelagic fisheries in general. If deemed useful in these instances, such a framework for analysis might be used to identify societal and other factors that might enhance or constrain the management strategies for other fisheries as well.
As the reader will see, it is not always easy to classify events as falling exclusively in one of the three levels. In fact, some of the events discussed may appear in more than one of the three levels of analysis. One such example relates to the rapid growth of Peru's exports and whether it was because of international level or national level causes. As Roemer (1970, p. 45) put it, “To what extent was Peru merely the passive beneficiary of expanding markets and to what extent did it become a more efficient producer of its export products than its competition?” The categories in which to discuss different events or activities were selected by the author according to this perceptions about which level was most appropriate.
There are several important areas not addressed in this paper because they have already received widespread attention in the fisheries literature. These include the competition of economic models for the attention of (and use by) fishery managers, the strengths and weaknesses of different competing fish population models, and detailed considerations of marketing factors that can affect how a fishery might be managed. Also omitted are discussions of the numerous regulatory schemes that have been implemented or have been proposed for implementation in attempts at rational fishery management. In addition, the paper presents examples drawn only from coastal pelagic fisheries, so as to avoid selective use of exemlpes from different types of living marine resources (crustaceans, demersals, whales, shellfish, ocean pelagic, and so forth) in order to make a point. This type of selective attention is often misleading to policymakers, because, as one might effectively argue, different species require different management schemes.
Finally, this paper is not an attempt to present new factual information on fisheries and their management, but to present a new way of organizing and evaluating existing information. It is the application of an existing framework for analysis (Waltz, 1959) to better understand the different influences, stimuli, and constraints that affect the management of a living marine resource such as the Peruvian anchoveta.
Peru: An Introduction
Peru has traditionally been divided into three geographically defined zones; the coastal plain, occupied to a large extent by coastal deserts, the mountainous sierra, and the jungle or selva (Miller et al., 1974, p. 7). This view of Peru persists today (e.g., Banks and Overstreet, 1981, p. 2981). In the mid-1970's, however, a Peruvian geographer challenged the traditional division into three regions. He divided Peru into eight geographically defined regions (Pulgar Vidal, n.d.). Like other geographical accounts, however, this textbook also combined the sea with the coastal plain. In fact, little attention was devoted to consideration of the coastal marine environment.
In a conference report on Social and Economic Change in Peru (Miller et al., 1974, p.7), the conventional division of Peru into three parts was also challenged. The editors of this report suggested that there be a different emphasis, other than geography, based on
…functional links rather than characteristics of terrain, land-use and society. The concept of functional regions underlies the modern division of Peru into planning regions
…which transcend environmental contrasts, brutal and striking though they are.
The examples given at this particular conference centered on mining and agriculture, suggesting, for example, that the cotton production on coastal estates had ties to the interior for labor and to Lima(Peru's capital) for transportation but little interaction with other regions of Peru. This particular conference had little discussion of Peru's living marine resources. These few examples, together with other evidence, suggest a traditional bias in Peru toward the land and its resources (e.g., minerals, and food and fiber crops), despite the importance to that country of coastal living marine resources. This bias toward the land has probably affected how Peru's marine resources have been viewed.
Given the conventional division of countries according to their geophysical features, and given the rich biological productivity of the Peruvian coastal waters and the importance of those waters to the Peruvian economy, and given that its geophysical features are distinct from the geophysical features of other terrestrial regions of Peru, Peru's coastal waters could (if not should) have been separated as yet another (ninth) distinct geographical region. Reinforcing this contention, Peru's controversial Fishing Minister under General Velasco (1968–1975), Tantaléan, established a new slogan, “La Marcha Hacia el Oeste” (“The march to the west,” that is, to the ocean). He also noted that “Peru needed to awaken its maritime consciousness” (Tantaléan, 1978. p. 214).
One of the most productive upwelling regions in the world in terms of primary productivity is along the coast of Peru (e.g., Smith, 1968; Posner, 1957).1 The Peruvian upwelling is linked to the persistence of the south-east trade winds, which, when coupled with the rotation of the earth, tend to drive the surface water away from the coast (e.g., Wyrtki et al., 1976;O'Brien et al., 1981). The colder, nutrient-rich, deep water then upwells to the surface where photosynthesis is can occur. Although the Peruvian upwelling is considered to be relatively persistent, variability within the system does take place. The Peruvian upwelling has been well researched by the scientific community in the past (e.g., CUEA, JOINT II, etc) and continues to receiv widesparead interest by researchers in the oceanographic and atmospheric sciences (e.g., Tropical OceanographicAtmospheric Newsletters).
1Coastal upwelling is the process whereby relatively persistent winds drive the surface water away from the coast, allowing deeper, nutrient-laden colder water to take its place. When this upwelled deep, nutrient-rich water enters the sunlit (euphotic) zone, photosynthesis takes place and the nuterients are then consumed by microorganisms and predators at higher trophic levels. Somalia and Namibia) that make up only 0.1% of the ocean's surface supply 44-50% of all commercial fish landings (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1974).
There are also several less productive or more seasonal (as oposed to presistent) coastal upwelling systems, such as the Malbar and Orrissa coasts of India, Ghana, Java, and Coasta rica (Cushing, 1975).
The Peruvian coastal upwelling region was found to be abundant in anchoveta which had great potential value as a commercial fishery. With an increase in world demand for fishmeal following World War II and with the collapse of the Californian Pacific sardine fishery in the early 1950's, U.S. interest in fisheries shifted to Peru (Boerema and Gulland, 1973). Factories for fishmeal production were built in peru in the early 1950's discreetly at first, so as to avoid making suspicious the politically powerful guano industry 2 which sought to block large-scale exploitation of the fish on which the guano birds depend (Paulik, 1971). The guano industry's blocking efforts in the 1950's and 1960's failed (Boerema and Gulland, 1973). From the mid 1950's to the mid 1960's the Peruvian anchoveta fishery underwent what might be called meteoric growth, as canbe seen fromthe following fish landings statistics (Figure 1).
By the end of the 1960's, when the fishmeal industry had developed into one of the most productive in the world and when a relatively large number of people had become involved in or affected by it, there were greater possibilities of social dislocation resulting from a major oceanographic-meteorological event known as El Niño than had been the case during the early stages of the development of the Peruvian fishing industry.
Coastal upwelling, El Niño, and the Peruvian fishery
El Niño is generally defined as the invasion of warm water from time to time into the upwelling region of the eastern equatorial Pacific that adversely affects primary productivity and thus the standing stock of anchoveta. While there is no widely accepted definition of El Niño, it becomes clear from a collection of definitions from various sources that there is a sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, social component to many of the El Niño definitions. For example, some have viewed any invasion of warm water that does not affect the established economy of the region (in the Peruvian case, the anchoveta fishery) as a non-El Niño event. What might be considered an El Niño by Ecuadorian observers might not be considered one by Peruvians. Indeed, one Ecuadorian observes noted that his country was constantly faced with E1 Nino condition.Furthermore, what might be considered an E1 Nino by scientist might not be considered one by fisherman. Thus,in addition to the scintific definition of E1 Nino, from a socitetal standpoint it can be viewed as an occasional invasion of warm water into the eastern equatorial it that has a harmful effect on the established economy of the region.
2 Guano is the excrement of anchoveta-consuming birds (cormorant, gannet,pelican, etc.) that inhabit the rocky barren islands along the Peruvian coast. It is a fertilizer that has been mined commercially since the 1840's and sold as an export as well as used within peru (see for example, Levin, 1960; Miller et al., 1974).
El Niño events have occurred ‘quasi-periodically’ in past centuries (Murphy, 1926; Ramage, 1975). According to Ramage, there have been at least eight major El Niño events in Peruvian waters between 1900 and 1975, events which he defined as having encompassed two summers and one winter (in the southern hemisphere). Every El Niño event varies in intensity, duration, and magnitude and thus its ecological and societal impacts also vary (Paulik, 1971). Wooster and Guillen (1974) have distinguished the major El Niño events from the minor ones. Recent once have occured in the 1957–1958, and 1972–1973 1973 (see, for example, Bjerknes, 1966; Paulik, 1971; Miller and Laurs, 1975), and had major socioeconomic and environmental (and sometimes political) implications for Peru, as was the case in 1972–1973 (Caviedes, 1975; Miller and Laurs, 1975; Wooster and Guillen, 1974). 1976 was yet another El Niño year, but apparently not a major one by the geophysical definition.
This year scientists have been suggesting that we are witnessing the development of a major El Niño event (U.S. National Weather Service, 1982; Tropical Oceanographic—atmospheric pheric Newsletter, 1983; Philander, 1983). It began in the the Southern Hemisphere Fall of 1982 and has continued into 1983. Its unusual characteristics when compared to previous El Niño events, such as its rate, location, and timing of development, may challenge the current definitions and wisdom about such events (Rasmusson and Carpenter 1982; Weare 1982; Quinn, 1984). Because of its magnitude, its apparent differences with earlier El Niño events, and its hypothesized linkages with seasonal weather in North America and elsewhere (e.g., O'Brien, 1978; National Research Council, 1982), there has been a resurgent interest in this phenomenon by the popular press (e.g., Golden, 1983).
The 1972–1973 El Niño has been blamed for the recent near-collapse of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery and the resultant poor state of the Peruvian economy. 3 The impact on society of that E1 Niño was major, because by the late 1960's Peru had become one of the world's largest fishing nations,accounting for 22% by tonnage of the world's commercial landings (Lima Times, 18 March 1977, p. 7), and a major exporter of fishmeal (Glantz, 1979).
In fact, the high level of fishing activity in 1972 obscured the poor state of the stock and the initial effects of E1 Niño, leading eventually to a sharp decline in the Peruvian catch, in fishmeal exports, and to adverse changes in Peru's balance of payments. peru's anchoveta catch, on which its, economy had to a large extent become dependent for foreign exchange, from an all-time high of 12.4 MMT (officially reported) in 1970 to less than 2 MMT in 1973. In the next three years the anchoveta catch did not go above 4 MMT. In 1977 thefishery was closed in the spring and a ban was placed on fishing anchoveta for the year.
3 El Niño was not the only climate-related anomaly to occur in 1972, but was one of a set of events that had a deleterious effect on the global food production system as well as on the perceptions about the system's ability to feed its members (Garcia, 1981). The USSR, for example, registered one of its worst shortfalls in grain production as a result of drought (Katz, 1973), and resorted to major grain imports from the USA (Trager, 1975); this in turn contributed to a scarcity of wheat on the world market. That year droughts also occurred in Central America, the Sahelian zone of West Africa, India, the People's Republic of China, and in parts of Australia and Kenya (FAO, 1974). As a result of the 1972 anomalies, along with other socioeconomic factors (such as the impacts of, as well as reactions to, those anomalies), global per capita food production and global food reserves declined for the first time in more than twenty years (Brown, 1974). In addition to these events and the decline in Peruvian fish landings, there was a simultaneous decline in fish landings in other regions,challenging the assumption that the oceans would be a source of food that could supplement agricultural production to feed the growing populations of the world (see, for example, Thompson, 1977).
Since 1977 the anchoveta catch has not surpassed the 2 MMT level (Figure 2).
In May 1973, the Peruvian government nationalized the fishing industry - fleet and plant capacity - ostensibly to establish a degree of economic rationalization within the industry and to preserve their anchoveta fishery. The nationalization led to discontent and unrest. Fishermen and many of the entrepreneurs felt that they would have had a better chance on their own (‘survival of the fittest’). Others, however, heavily in debt, favoured nationalization, which saved them from bankruptcy. Fishermen were subsidized by the government and told when and how much to fish, until the fleet was denationalized in mid-1976. The decision to denationalize the fleet was a result of the poor state of the Peruvian economy, which at that time was plagued by major financial crisis, and, in particular, by the high cost to the government of subsidizing fishermen and the fishing fleet during years of poor catches. The denationalization led to political unrest among fishermen and factory workers. Many of those who had fought against nationalization now fought against denationalization, because they knew that catches would be low due to the poor state of the standing stock.
As a result of the sharp decline in the productivity of the Peruvian fishery in the early 1970's and a decline in the production of anchoveta fishmeal since 1972, alternative sources of livestock feed (such as soybean) began to compete successfully with Peruvian fishmeal (Kolhonen, 1974). Thus, the fishery is of less importance on a global scale, relatively speaking, today than it was a decade ago.
This brief introduction to the Peruvian situation sets the stage for the sections that follow, using the three levels of analysis. The international level is discussed first, primarily because it provides the broadest context for fisheries management. In addition, it is at that level that the attentive public comes into contact with fisheries, when the popular press describes such newsworthy events as the “cod war” between Great Britain and Iceland, the “lobster war” between France and Brazil, international conflicts related to the 200-mile jurisdiction, the impact of factory ship on marine resources, the potential for harvesting krill in the Antarctic, and the seizure of tuna boats in coastal waters of western South American countries.
THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
In other Latin American countries, many development planners are asking how Peru created a first-class modern industry so quickly on such an unprecedented scale. Is there a lesson here, I asked, for other nations? (Stroetzel, “Fishing for meal,” 1965)
Few commercial fisheries can be considered truly national. Even when the international community is not directly involved in a national fishery, the zfishery will surely be affected by factors that originate in other nations.
Such factors can affect the supply of fish and might include, for example, the transfer of technology (including technical advisers), jurisdiction over coastal waters, the need for foreign exchange, and loans from international development agencies. They can also affect the demand for fish products, and might include such factors as international market demands, competition from other fisheries, and international commodity prices for fish products. A third set of international factors might encompass aspects that do not appear to relate directly to fisheries management, and could include, for example, reactions of the international community to the expropriation of foreign investment in sectors other than fishing or to the seizure of foreign fishing vessels.
Underlying these international considerations one finds differing, often opposing, ideological perspectives about society through which each of these actions is filtered. While those with differing ideological perspectives may agree, for example, that a specific activity transpired, they often disagree about its causes or its consequences. Ideological considerations affecting the Peruvian anchoveta fishery will be discussed in the section on the individual level of analysis.
Territorial waters
Many coastal countries whose living marine resources are or have been exploited at high levels have blamed long-distance trawlers and factory ships from other countries for the apparent depletion of their resources (see, for example, Gulland, 1979; Kaczynski, 1979). Factory ships can process, prepare, and store fish catches for several weeks before they return to port. They are accompanied by a fleet of vessels that deliver their catches to the mother ship. These ships have generally abided by international law, operating outside the territorial waters of coastal nations. They operated as early as the 1920's, (off the coast of California), but more extensively on a worldwide scale between the 1950's, and mid 1970's. Often local fishermen of coastal states would deliver their catches to these ships rather than to factories along their own coast because of higher prices for their catches.
Countries that have relied on the use of factory ships, such as the USSR, South Korea, Poland, and Japan, could send them to a fishery, and efficiently capture and process their catches without having to limit their operations to coastal areas where port or processing facilities existed. Referring to the northwest African situation, as an example, Crutchfield and Lawson (1974, p. 14) have noted that:
Before 1969 only two fishmeal factory ships in the world exploited pelagic stocks. In 1970 at least six such ships operated off northwest Africa…(Each factory ship) has a daily processing capacity of 1,000 to 3,000 metric tons of fish, which are provided by ten to twenty modern purse seiners. Storage facilities on a factory ship allow it to carry enough raw material for a day or two of processing and to accumulate meal and oil for several weeks without unloading.
Representatives of many coastal nations have voiced their concern that factory ships and long distance trawlers would deplete their coastal living marine resources, long before they could develop a national fishing industry. Crutchfield and Lawson (1974, p. 14), reinforcing that concern, suggested an hypothetical example of how devastating the fish harvesting technology of those ships could be: “a fleet of ten factory ships could harvest and process…the 1969 Peruvian anchoveta catch (9 million metric tons) in ten months.”
Factory ships involved in fish reduction have been implicated in the past in the demise of some important pelagic fisheries, such as the Californian Pacific sardine fishery as early as the 1920's (e.g., Ahlstrom and Radovich, 1970; Radovich, 1981) and the pilchard fishery off the coast of South West Africa (Lees, 1969). They have also been blamed for the depletion of stocks in many other parts of the world, including the highly productive waters off the northwest coast of Africa (e.g. Crutchfield and Lawson, 1974) as well as in the North Atlantic. Thus, factory ships as well as long-distance trawlers presented a clear danger to the survival of coastal living marine resources in various regions around the world until the mid 1970's. Their sphere of operations, however, has been greatly curtailed with the recent adoption by many coastal states of the 200-mile extended economic zone. As noted in the FAO EEZ Programme (1981b, p. 3),
The opportunities for coastal communities to manage their fisheries were greatly restricted when many, if not most, commercial stocks lay both within and beyond the limits of a narrow territorial sea. Now these countries have a chance to use the fish resources in ways that will benefit their peoples and economies as well as enable them to conserve a renewable resource.
In 1947, Peru protected itself (inadvertently) from this important international aspect of fisheries exploitation that was yet to become popular, by barring foreign factory ships from their waters. In that year, Peru claimed 200-mile territorial waters. The 200-mile claim was rejected by the United States because, at that time, most states, including the United States, claimed a 3-mile territorial limit and a 12-mile fishing limit. According to some observers, an additional factor reinforcing the U.S. reluctance to accept the claim by Peru and other South American states to the 200-mile limit was that it was developing a tuna fishery and the pursuit of tuna would require American vessels, among those of other countries, to go within 200 miles of the coasts of Peru and Ecuador.
There have been frequent international incidents when these South American governments, regardless of the ideological perspectives of the government in power at the time, authorized their navies to capture those vessels that violated their territorial waters. The fishing companies (or their flag countries) were then forced to pay large fines. For example, one celebrated case in the 1950's pitted Aristotle Onassis against the Peruvian government, which demanded the payment of a $3,000,000 fine in return for the release of his whaling vessel that had been fishing in its waters ( U.S. News and World Report, 17 June 1955, p. 87). With respect to the U.S. violations, Goodsell (1974) summarized this situation, noting that
…more than 35 interceptions of U.S. boats were made between 1953 and 1970. The offenders are escorted to the nearest Peruvian port where they are required to pay fines and penalties amounting to as much as $15,000 per boat (p. 132)…After very few seizures in 1970–1972, during which time schools of tuna failed to appear off Peru, at-sea captures became common once again in 1973 (p.134).
Ironically (to some observers), these South American governments apparently got the idea for extending their territorial waters from a policy statement by U.S. President Truman, who declared the continental shelf off the U.S. coast to belong to the United States. According to Wesley Marx (1967, pp. 202–3),
When President Truman annexed the seabed of the adjacent continental shelf, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru looked at theirs. Citing the Truman Proclamation as a precedent, they extended their borders to possess sole sovereignty and jurisdiction…not less than 200 miles from the coast.
Outside the territorial waters, which until the mid 1970's were still generally taken to be up to 12 miles (with the notable exceptions of Peru, Ecuador, and Chile), the living marine resources were considered a common property resource and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of any single nation. Garrett Hardin (1968) popularized the concept of common property resources when he wrote about the “tragedy of the commons.” In his popularization which, of course, had been preceded by other papers on “the fishery commons” (e.g., Gordon, 1954), Hardin discussed how a resource (the preservation or protection of which was the responsibility of no one authority) could be misused to the point of destruction. His original discussion related directly to rangelands and livestock, but many authors have since applied the concept of the tragedy of the commons to other common property resources (e.g., Hardin and Baden, 1977). Because Peru's coastal marine resources had been excluded from international exploitation, its yet-to-be-developed anchoveta fishery was spared from becoming another overexploited international common property resource. Thus, by declaring a 200-mile limit, some of the major, often troublesome, international aspects of fisheries management were avoided by Peru during the development of its anchoveta fishery.
The other side of this coin, however, was that Peruvian governments have (collectively) had to bear responsibility for the successes and failures of the management of their anchoveta fishery. When the near-collapse came in the early 1970's, Peruvian leaders could blame neither foreign factory ships nor neighbouring countries for the overexploitation of their main stock of anchoveta off the central coastal area. They could only blame nature and, more specifically, El Niño events (Tantalean 1978, p. 250 ) as the primary cause of the reduced productivity of their anchoveta fishery.
Influence of other fisheries
Another major international aspect of the development of the Peruvian fisheries concerns the origin of its fishmeal industry, and has to do with a different fishery thousands of miles from Peru, along the west coast of North America.
The Californian Pacific sardine fishery had flourished for decades since the early 1900's and was at its peak in the 1930's (see, for a pictorial history, Reinstedt, 1978). By the mid 1940's, it became apparent to all but the wishful thinkers that the continued productivity of that fishery was in question (e.g., Radovich, 1981). Its apparent decline was manifested in the quantity and quality, as well as the southward shift in location, of commercial landings. Despite a brief increase in recruitment in the late 1940's, the fishery had essentially collapsed as a viable economic activity by 1952.
As a result of the impending collapse, California fishing industries were plagued with idle fleet and fish processing capacity, with no fish to catch or to process. This situation was graphically portrayed by the American novelist John Steinbeck in his books Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. With respect to the idle fleet, one observer noted that
Some vessels apparently were diverted to other fisheries, others were sold out of the state or the country, still others were scrapped…. Some sardine vessels were diverted to the U.S. tuna fishery…and others were sold to Mexico where the sardine fishery off the Baja California was still good (Ahlstrom, quoted in Diegues, 1983, pp. 20-22).
The underlying conditions for the development of a food and/or industrial fishery in Peru had already been established in the early 1940's, when, for example, foreign assessments of biological productivity in Peruvian waters proved to be extremely favourable (e.g., Horna, 1968, p. 394; Roemer, 1970, p. 46). Another underlying international condition for any possible development of such a fishery was the rapidly increasing international demand for fishmeal as a feed supplement for poultry and livestock in the post World War II period. Caravedo (1977), among others (e.g., Culley, 1971), suggested that the catalyst for development of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery came when the owners of the idle fishing vessels and fish processing plants in California decided to sell that capacity to Peruvian entrepreneurs, enticing them with extremely advantageous financial arrangements (see also Horna, 1968, p. 397).
Some American companies joined with Peruvians to establish cooperative arrangements and subsidiaries to exploit the anchoveta for reduction to fishmeal. In an historical account of the first fifty years of the American company that built the first commercial fishmeal factory in Peru, (Wilbur-Ellis, 1972) it was noted that
…the ultimate success of Wilbur-Ellis in Peru is largely traced to a meeting in San Francisco between Brayton Wilbur and Manuel Elguera. Elguera was a Peruvian businessman deeply interested in developing his nation's fishery…It was through this close friendship that Wilbur came to participate in the…establishment of the most flourishing fishery in history (p. 14).
Idle Californian fleet and plant capacity was also sold to South African entrepreneurs in the early 1950's, providing an impetus to the development of that fishery as well as that of Peru (e.g., Diegues, 1983; Marx, 1981; Lees, 1969; Culley, 1971). In fact Culley (1971, p.211) has even suggested that the South and South West African fisheries might have expanded more rapidly than they did in the late 1940's and early 1950's had it not been for the rapid development of the Peruvian fishery in the 1950's. This view has been questioned, however, because South African fisheries began as a food fishery whereas Peru was developing an industrial fishery.
Technology transfer
Another major international aspect of fisheries management in general, and of the Peruvian situation in particular, has been technology transfer (e.g., Diegues, 1983; Gulland, 1972, p. 175; Lees, 1969, p. 201). The implications of technology transfer in the economic development process have been the subject of great interest for the past few decades and have stimulated a great debate on the role of technology in the development process in developing countries (e.g., Goulet, 1977). There have been successes and failures (e.g.,Frvar and Milton, 1972). (ill)(1979, p. 53) has commented that in addition to successes in the realm of fisheries, “unfortunately, there also have been a good number of costly and frustrating failures—mainly due to attempted introduction of overly sophisticated technology combined with a lack of understanding of local cultural, social and economic concerns.” Technology, however, can be viewed as neutral. One author (Goulet, 1977, p. 17)has referred to it as a two-edged sword, suggesting that “although it brings new freedom from old constraints imposed by nature, tradition, or ancient social patterns, technology also introduces new determinisms into the life of its adepts.”
There are many examples of new technology being incorporated into the Peruvian fishery. The development of the nylon net has been cited by numerous authors as a major breakthrough for enterpreneurs wanting to invest in fisheries (e.g., Roemer, 1970; Horna, 1968l Lee Smith, private communication, 1983). Nylon nets were more expensive than the cotton nets they replaced but they were also more durable. Thus, nylon nets lowered the long—term costs of anchoveta fishing. Roemer (1970, p. 47) noted that
Technological progress probably played a key role (in the fishmeal boom). In particular, in 1956 nylon nets began to replace the easily broken cotton ones, and the cost reduction was sufficient by itself to make the industry profitable in Peru.
It became more attractive for Peruvians to buy into the fishery, especially given the favourable terms that were being offered. In fact, a competition for Peruvian markets began and, as Horna (1968, P. 397) noted,
By 1955 foreign businessmen and manufacturers began coming to Peru to offer their products. The Japanese offered nylon nets priced up to $12,000 with 18 months to pay. When Norwegians extended their credit to two years, the Japanese lowered their prices and matched the two year credot record. Engine manufactirers engaged in a wild scramble to gain customers.
The use of the nylon net was in itself not bad but restrictions related to increased access to the fishery, resulting from the use of such nets, should have been considered. In other words, an assessment of the implications of nylon nets on the development of the fishery might have identified some of the problems that accompanied the “lower costs” to buy into the fishery by eager Peruvian entrepreneurs.
This particular technological input occured at a propitious time. The fishmeal entrepreneurs had recently won a major political victory defeating the efforts by the Guano Administration Company and their supporters (and more broadly the agro—exporters) to block the development of the fishmeal industry. The victory was due in part to the fact that the prices of guano and agricultural commodities had fallen and, independent of that, there was an increase in price and demand for fishmeal. Reinforcing this point, another observer (Caravedo 1977, p. 110) suggested that in 1954
The prices of agricultural export products declined in the international market, and production had to be transferred to new export activities that could contribute to an equilibrium in the balance of payments.
Other technological transfers that affected the exploitation of the fishery include the power block, echo sounder, purse seiners, vacuum pumps, and so on. Each new additional input of technology or technique increased the efficiency of fishermen in capturing the anchoveta. Each addition to plant or fleet capacity stimulated a desire, as much as a need, for larger catches, which in turn required greater efficiency in capture and processing techniques.
As mentioned earlier, by the early 1960's the Peruvian anchoveta fishery had become the number one fishery in the world (based on the tonnage). Its fleet, equipment (power blocks, nylon nets, echo sounders, purse seines), and processing capability were quite sophisticated. According to the Encyclopedia of Marine Resources (Firth, 1969, p. 510),
The Peruvian fishing industry caught 9.76 MMT of anchoveta in 1967, operating a fleet, exclusively devoted to anchoveta, of 1,536 boats of which 58% are steel-hulled …of all the boats, 98.5% are provided with echo-sounders and 82.9% with power blocks; only 76.9% of the boats have special pumps to transfer fish from net in the water to the hold.
In addition, the boat owners and their captains and crews were becoming wiser fishermen (e.g., the learning bias factor). With respect to this factor, Gulland (1968, p. 2) noted that
The influence of the skipper on the catches is a major factor in any fishery…Up to 1963 the size of the fleet was increasing between 50% and 100% each year. That is, in each year between one-third and one-half of the skippers were fishing for anchoveta for the first time at least as skippers…In 1966/7 the situation was different, in that most of the fishermen had three to five year's experience.
Over time older boats were replaced by newer, bigger, and better equipped vessels. Processing plants were also replaced by newer ones incorporating the most modern technology, much of which had been transferred from such developed fishing nations as Japan, the United States, and Norway.
Included as an element of technology transfer would be technical advice provided by foreign experts. Kasahara (1978, p. 106; see also Shàrfe, 1979), commenting on the general problem of technology transfer for fisheries, lamented the fact that
(Developing countries) are swamped with advice, technical assistance, equipment selling, fishing agreement or joint venture offers, international funding proposals, etc. from various sources. A combination of these usually tends to result in overcapacities by building up a fishing fleet and shore facilities too rapidly since they appear to be cheap and sometimes free. The administrators of at least some of these countries are incapable of sorting out good advice and offers from bad ones.
As with technology, there are successes and failures with technical advice as well (see, for example, Glantz, 1980a). It is important to keep in mind some cautionary concerns that have been raised about the use of foreign experts in fisheries development and management. For example, an expert with the U.N. FAO (Schàrfe, 1979, p. 54) suggested that
Outside consultants often are not well versed in the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the local fishing situation, so they are often unable to offer meaningful solutions to problems. And because the government officer in charge of fishery operations may not have full subject matter competence, there is often a gap in understanding on both sides contributing to an unsuccessful transfer of technology.
Many of these experts provided advice to industry and government on how (as well as why) to develop and expand its fishery, nonetheless. As another example, Diegues (1983) noted that, in addition to boats and processing equipment, the industrialists involved in selling off components of the Californian Pacific sardine fishery also exported to South and South West Africa and to South America valuable expertise that had been accumulated in the California industry. “These exports of capital and know-how, it is often claimed, greatly facilitated the takeoff of the new pilchard and anchovy processing industries of those countries” (p. 22). Finally, an important Peruvian fishmeal manufacturer also referred to the transfer of technical know-how from California to Peru in the early 1950's when he commented that
It would be unfair of me if I were to omit special recognition for the permanent friendly attitude and the advice and assistance given to the Peruvian fishing enterprise by American institutions and scientists, mainly from the State of California. (Quoted in Marx, 1967, p. 214.)
A different international aspect related to technical advice for the Peruvian anchoveta fishery would be the establishment of an institute for marine research to study the fishery and the biology of the anchoveta. In 1960 the Marine Research Institute of Peru began these studies as a project of the U.N. Special Fund undertaken by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1964 the Institute was renamed the Instituto del Mar del Peru (IMARPE). Later an anchoveta stock assessment was undertaken by foreign and Peruvian scientists (under FAO/IMARPE sponsorship) in order to provide those in government and industry who were involved in managing the fishery with “the first appraisal of the extent of the anchovy stock and of the effects of fishery on this stock” (Boerema et al., 1965, p. l; see also, Kesteven, 1981).
Almost immediately, IMARPE scientists and foreign consultants began to warn about the increasing possibility of overfishing. For example, as early as this first stock assessment report in 1965 (Boerema et al., 1965, p. 2) they concluded (with some reservations) that
There is further evidence that a state of the fishery has been reached where additional effort will result only in an insignificant increase of total catch and in further marked declines of catch per unit of effort… It is thus concluded that the fishery cannot be much further expanded.
For these scientists, the task of aiding in the development of a management strategy calling for the self-restraint of the fishing community or restraints imposed by government agencies on that community was extremely difficult, especially in the absence of reliable and, perhaps more important, visible indicators of depletion of the anchoveta resource. Foreign expert panels were convened on an ad hoc basis beginning in the late 1960's to advise on biological as well as regulatory aspects of fisheries management (e.g., IMARPE panel reports). In 1969, for example, IMARPE convened a panel of foreign economic experts to assess various regulatory schemes for the fishery. That panel concluded (IMARPE 1970) that the fishery was in great danger of collapse because of the excessive pressures on it from overcapitalization of the industry's fleet and plant processing capacity. The report also noted (IMARPE, 1970, pp. 5–6) that
A substantive reduction in the capacity of vessels and plant… would greatly diminish the grave threat to the anchoveta stock ensuing from the financial difficulties of part of the industry which, particularly when fishmeal prices are high and fish are scarce, lead to strong pressure to relax the necessary catch restrictions.
Nowhere in the report, however, was there any mention of the potential impacts of an El Niño. Thus, the potential combined effect of overcapitalization of the fishing sector and the known variability of the environment were not considered by this panel.
The occurrence of the 1972–1973 El Niño at a time of high fishing pressures and immediately following a 1971 stock recruitment failure sent the Peruvian anchoveta industry into a sharp decline, as reflected in catch statistics for the early 1970's (see Figure 2). In 1976 the IMARPE scientists continued to warn the Fisheries Ministry about the possible adverse effects of reopening the anchoveta fishery prematurely, before the standing stock had a chance to rebuild.
The Minister of Fisheries convened a consultative group of foreign fisheries experts in 1977 apparently to evaluate the conservative advice he had received from the Peruvian scientific community. According to the consultative group's report (Ministry of Fisheries, 1977, p. i), “The group's work consisted of reviewing, testing and challenging the results, interpretations and conclusions, questioning the methods employed, and seeking to assess the accuracy of the results obtained.”
The advice of the Peruvian scientists to the Ministry was upheld by these foreign experts (Ministry of Fisheries, 1977, p. 12). That the government had such a meeting at all suggests a lack of confidence by fishery managers in the advice of their Peruvian scientists. (This issue is discussed in more detail in the analysis of the national level.)
Economic development policies
Yet another international aspect of the fisheries relates to Peru's policies toward economic development. Peruvian leaders, especially between 1948 and 1968 and once again after the 1980 election of Belaúde Terry (whose government had been overthrown in 1968 by the military coup of Velasco), have, to varying degrees, favoured a policy of exportled development. This development strategy is based on the export of primary resources (as opposed to manufactured goods) in order to earn foreign exchange which can then be used to finance economic development on a national scale. Peru has often been criticized by Third World development economists as well as marxists because of its pursuit of economic development through exports.4
Export-led development can be categorized as a national level factor (to be discussed in the following section), if one assumes that the initiative for its pursuit has been national as opposed to having been imposed by other countries. This development strategy, however, does have important international aspects. For example, fishmeal exports are affected by foreign currency exchange rates (see for example: Brown, 1965; Kuczynski, 1977). Kuczynski, a high ranking government official in the 1960's (and again after 1980), has discussed the impacts on the Peruvian fishing industry of variations in prices for fishmeal in the international marketplace. Fishmeal exports are also affected by the availability of similar or substitutable exports from other countries with which they compete for markets. Kuczynski (1977) recorded his belief that fisheries provided an unstable base on which to build a development programme, because of the highly variable nature of resource availability.
4 With respect to dependence on exports, Peruvian leaders have been criticized for their pursuit of policies favouring export-led development. Dependence on the revenue derived from primary exports has been cited as fostering colonialism, neo-imperalism, and underdevelopment. Many instances are cited to show that development in an export sector has little impact on other areas of society. These have been referred to as export enclaves (Miller et al., 1974). However, unlike many developing countries whose economies are based on the export of only a few primary products, Peru has a diversified export-based economy that in theory should buffer it from the fluctuations at a given time of price and demand in the international marketplace of any single export commodity.
One of the major competitors to fishmeal is soymeal, and the relative prices of these competing products can also affect the activities in the Peruvian fishing community (e.g., Vondruska, 1981). In fact, the near collapse of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery in 19721973 stimulated the sharp increase in price for fishmeal which became an additional consideration that encouraged other countries, such as the United States and Brazil, to devote more of their agricultural lands to soybean production in order to get a greater share of the livestock feed market.
An optimistic assessment (World Fishing, February 1978, p. 31) about the role of fishmeal in the development process has suggested that
In developing countries there are good reasons why a particular fish resource may not be utilized as a source of food…. It is much more feasible to consider the establishment of fishmeal industry which will provide a basic earning power by the export of the product.
Yet, recent projections about fishmeal have presented a more pessimistic view (Robinson, 1982, p. 7):
The fishmeal market seems to have suffered permanent damage because of the shortages and very high prices which followed the collapse of the Peruvian anchoveta. Compounders are now less keen to include fishmeal in their feeds, although they would if price and advantages became marked.
As a final comment, it is important to note that some actions that seemingly affect only one sector of the economy might be shown, upon closer scrutiny, to have international impacts on other, unrelated, economic and social sectors. The Peruvian dispute with the American-owned International Petroleum Company (IPC) illustrates this point (see, for example, Kuczynski, 1977; Goodsell, 1974; Olson, 1975). Lingering uncertainty that surrounded the outcome of a Peruvian dispute with the IPC apparently reduced the flow of U.S. development assistance to Peru in this period. Largely as a result of the Peruvian desire to take control of its natural resources (a national level action), and doubts about an outcome favourable to American interests, the per capita U.S. A.I.D. capital assistance and grants to Peru had been among the lowest in Latin America for the 1963 to 1968 period (Kuczynski, 1977, p. 125). According to Kuczynski, President Belaúnde believed that
The financial problems of his regime would be alleviated if AID could lend Peru the same amounts it made available to Chile or Colombia. Instead of relying on expensive supplier's credits, loans from the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) and from AID would now become plentiful (p.260)^^…. President Belaúnde had been right in seeing that some agreement with IPC would unlock the foreign aid dam (p. 262).
An agreement was finally reached in mid 1968 between the Belaúnde regime and the IPC, only to be annulled a few months later, following a military coup that established General Velasco's leftist regime (see also Goodsell, 1974). By 1969 all IPC assets in Peru had been seized by Velasco and a multiyear dispute ensued between Peru and the United States about what would constitute “swift and just” compensation for the expropriation. This takeover, coupled with “continued seizure of American tuna clippers inside the 200-mile limit and the establishment, for the first time by a Peruvian government, of diplomatic ties with communist countries drove the U.S.–Peruvian relations to the lowest point in a century” (Goodsell, 1974, p. 84). A Peruvian commented in an interview that “the IPC problem has created a big international question mark which has effectively shut off foreign credits and foreign investments” (quoted in Goodsell, 1974, p. 84).
Against the backdrop of this takeover and the announced intentions to nationalize communications networks (newspapers, radio, etc.) and to implement radical agrarian reform, “Rumors began to circulate (about six months after the coup) that the fishmeal and mining industries would also be expropriated” (Goodsell, 1974, p. 84). The fear of government takeover of the fishing sector surely had some effect on fisheries management.
Summary- International Level
An important aim of this section has been to dispel a belief that what happens in one fishery is of little consequence, except in the marketing sector, to other fisheries in other regions exploiting similar but independent stocks. The Peruvian situation suggested that the rapid development of its fishing industry was precipitated by the collapse of the Californian Pacific sardine fishery. Apparently, that collapse was also a major factor in the development of the South African pilchard fishery.
Today we see a repetition of that experience, only the roles of the actors have changed. Peru, for example, has been attempting to sell its surplus catch and processing capacity in the international community. Fishing News International (October 1981) noted that “Surplus plants are to be offered abroad to the best bidders, although Pescaperu officials also talked of possible joint ventures with international companies.” (Pescaperu is the government company set up in 1973 to run the nationalized fishmeal industry.) The same issue of Fishing News International noted that Pepesca (“the money-losing Paita canning and freezing plant”) was trying to find a buyer for its tuna fleet and that Mexico, in the midst of large-scale development of its fisheries, has shown interest in this sale.
As another example, South African fishing companies have shown great interest in Chile's pilchard stocks,5 following the collapse of the South West African pilchard fishery in the late 1970's. Fishing News International (April 1981, p. 9) reported that
A joint venture between a Chilean group and two South African fishing companies is to set up two new factories in the northern ports of Iquique and Caldera…Much of their machinery is coming from Walvis Bay where factories of the South African companies had to close due to the depletion of pilchard stocks.
Thus, it becomes quite clear that there are many linkages between the national development of a fishery and the international community concerning when, how, why, and by whom the coastal living marine resources of a country are exploited and managed.
5 During the mid 1960's, when the Peruvian fishery was at its peak, Peru was engaged in exporting boats and plants to Chile (Stroetzel, 1965, p. 19). There are several interesting accounts about how the Chilean fishery was developed in its northern-most province and what the role of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery wsa in that development (e.g., Caviedes, 1981; Salinas M., 1973).
THE NATIONAL LEVEL
When the war came to Monterey (California) and to Cannery Row everybody fought it more or less, in one way or another. When hostilities ceased everyone had his wounds. The canneries themselves fought the war by getting limits taken off fish and catching them all. It was done for patriotic reasons, but that didn't bring the fish back. (Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday, 1954)
While catches decline and policy conflicts escalate, national fishing strategies can continue to vacillate between costly subsidies, technical fixes and wishful projections. (W. Marx, The Oceans: Our Last Resource, 1981)
The second level of analysis focuses on aspects of the national political process and on those groups that might impinge on the way in which the coastal living marine resources are managed. There are many events that take place in a given country that are national level activities which might directly or indirectly affect the management of marine resources; for example, the issuance of government decrees related to agrarian reform as well as to fisheries, worker strikes in the mining sector as well as in the fisheries, policies toward exchange rates (encouraging or discouraging exports and/or foreign investment), government nationalization of foreign investment in, for example, extractive industries (oil, copper, iron) as well as in the fishing sector. The fishing sector is only one subsystem embedded in a larger political system. In order to understand how the fishery is managed, it is necessary to be aware of that broader context.
In addition, there are political pressures with which leaders must constantly cope, such as the fear of a military coup or the lack of support of the press, political groups, or the legislature (e.g., Kuczyinski, 1977). These activities, many of which are not obviously related to fishery management, consume the attention of political leaders, and take time from other pressing issues, including the oversight of the management of the nation's coastal fishery.6
To present all such events for Peru (or, for that matter, for any other country) would be to reproduce its history, which is not the purpose of this section. This section will focus on (a) how conflicting objectives (goals, aims) for fishery management pursued by various groups in society might affect resource management and (b) political changes at the national level and their implications for fisheries management. There are other potentially relevant second-level actions that, at first glance, might appear to be unrelated to fisheries but in fact have proven to have major implications for the fishing sector. One such example might be the Peruvian expropriation of the International Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1969, which was an act based on political and economic nationalism at the national level. However, at the international level it served to heighten the reluctance of the U.S. government and, for a while, of the international development banks to provide development loans to Peru, until that issue was resolved to their satisfaction. This state of affairs adversely affected the general financial situation in Peru, making it all the more difficult for the government to continue its support for the nationalized fishery. Investigations of these less obvious factors are worthy of additional research.
6 For example, one of the major socioeconomic problems in Peru in the 20th Century has related to land reform. The large land owners in control of the most favourable agricultural lands have been challenged by peasants with little or no land favourable for agriculture. Each government has felt the political pressure for land reform. This has been a major preoccupation of most postwar governments in Peru. Harding (1975, p. 229) for example, suggested that “By the time political parties were functioning again leading up to the 1956 elections, they were all promising agrarian reform.”
Objectives in conflict
As noted in the international section, instead of becoming an international common property resource, the Peruvian anchoveta fishery became a common property resource at the national level. Of course, the end result of unregulated exploitation of a common property resource is often the same: over-exploitation and a high risk of depletion. An FAO pamphlet on the State of the World Fisheries reinforced the view that the attitudes that lead individuals, groups, or nations to over-exploit a fishery classified as an international common property resource exist for national common property resources as well (FAO, 1981b; see also Robinson, 1980).
Even where stocks have been exploited by one nation alone, the common property aspect has still had a damaging influence. Unlimited access to fish stocks and the competitive features of multinational fisheries, have been duplicated within national fisheries.
Clark (1973) raised an additional concern when he suggested that it might even be in the interest of a corporation (regardless of whether it is national or multinational) to exploit a fish stock to extinction (see also Gould, 1972). Hammergren (1983, private communication) has speculated that in the Peruvian case, the anchoveta was seen more as a means by which to achieve land-based development goals than as a development goal itself (despite Fisheries Minister Tantalean's attempt to raise the national consciousness about Peru's marine resources). Such an attitude could lead (unwittingly) to the severe depletion of the fish resource. The validity of such arguments (which, in theory, seem plausible) would show that how a fishery is exploited is more related to the objectives of the exploiters than to the number of international or national actors involved in that exploitation.
Each group in society pursues its own goals. These goals or objectives often conflict. As Gulland (1974) has suggested, “everybody concerned with fishing will have slightly different ideas on what the proper objective of fishery management should be.” Yet this phrase, “slightly different ideas,” is a rather mild description of competing interests pursued by groups locked in a struggle for a share of a finite fish resource.
The fact that these are competing interests (i.e., objectives) can adversely affect the management and viability of a living marine resource in which these groups have an economic, social, or political stake. Gulland also referred to “the proper objective.” This phrase, too, can be misleading, as it suggests that there is one true objective reality to which all might agree. One must keep in mind the assertion presented in a recent ACMRR Working Party Report on Management (FAO, 1979a, p. 7) that “What is important is the clear recognition that there are different classes of objectives biological, economic, and social - as well as different time horizons over which objectives might be obtained.”
One can find objectives stated by different groups involved in the exploitation of the same resource that are diametrically opposed to each other. While John Gulland's statement appears to belabor the obvious, it apparently requires constant reiteration. As the ACMRR Report (FAO, 1979a, p. 7) suggested, “There is an infinite range of biological, social, economic, and political objectives determined by local circumstances. Each of these objectives, if followed, could lead to a different pattern of harvest and exploitation.”
Every observer acknowledges that it was in the interest of the Peruvian Guano Administration Company, for example, to minimize the exploitation of anchoveta for reduction to fishmeal. While it was in the interest of the Guano Administration Company to block the development of an industrial fishery based on the exploitation of anchoveta, it was in the financial interests of Peruvian investors (from all walks of life) to invest in the capture and processing aspects of the anchoveta fishery. While it has been perceived by entrepreneurs to be in the interest of the fishmeal manufacturers to process as much fish as possible to increase production efficiency and for the boat owners to capture as many fish as they could to increase their profits and to pay off their loans, it is the objective, at least in theory, of fishery managers to assure through regulation that the resource will be available for future generations. Marine scientists may favour a more conservative approach to anchoveta exploitation because of the many uncertainties in the marine and atmospheric environments.
Bankers may wish to encourage development of a certain sector and make loans available to willing enterpreneurs. On this, one author (Stroetzel, 1965, pp. 20–21) suggested that after the mid 1950's (the beginning of the fishmeal boom) engine manufactures were saying “put down 25 per cent cash on a diesel and we'll finance your boat” (see also, Horna, 1968, p. 398). Bankers were reported as telling potential investors “Put up a third and we'll lend you the rest to build a processing plant.” As an example, those in the banking sector may wish to stimulate growth in the fishing sector by making loans available to potential investors at favourable rates, so that there will be spillover of economic activity into other sectors to support the fishing sector, such as boat, net and gear manufacturing, that would develop in support of the fishing sector. The bankers may achieve their objective but, as a Panel of Experts Report (IMARPE, 1970, p. 376) noted,
Surplus processing capacity encourages plant owners to expand their fleets in order to obtain larger shares of the allowable catch, thereby permitting them to improve profitability through wider spread of plant overhead and fixed costs that higher plant utilization bring with it.
Thus, such expansion in capacity will in turn lead to additional pressures on the fish resource. Objectives pursued by these groups often conflict with each other, and the attainment of some objectives (goals, aims) precludes the attainment of others.
Different approaches to economic development can lead to different objectives in the exploitation of living marine resources. If, for example, a government's objective is to improve the nutritional intake of its people, it may favour the development of a food fish industry either to increase domestic consumption of protein-rich products directly; or, in a country where fish is not a major source of protein for its people, a government must decide between making fish products acceptable to consumers within its country or selling those products in the international marketplace, and then using the foreign exchange to upgrade the population's nutritional intake (e.g., investment in those sectors of society that supply the people with their traditional protein needs).
On the other hand, the government may decide to forego the development of a food fishery in favour of a reduction fishery. This has been viewed as an unholy choice by some observers. In 1927, for example, during a legal conflict between Californian sardine canning and reduction interests, one observer commented that “It seems repugnant to every right-thinking citizen to see fresh fish used for any purpose other than human consumption” (Ahlstrom and Radovich, 1970, p. 186). This concern about the conflict between food and industrial catches extends into the present. For example, Popiel and Sosinski (1973, p. 228) have addressed this issue, nothing that “Rapidly expanding industrial catches along with steadily increasing fishmeal production in the last decades have been watched with anxiety by countries whose fishing fleets operate mainly for fish for human consumption”. Most recently, Mexico's Department of Fisheries decreed that its “sardine and anchovy industries must place the feeding of people before the feeding of animals” (Fishing News International, September 1981).
Fishing industries have developed worldwide based on the production of fishmeal, which can command a high price in the international marketplace under favourable circumstances, and can produce sorely needed foreign exchange. Foreign exchange (in theory) can then be used to finance economic development. Referred to as export-led development, Peru has been no stranger to this approach to economic development (e.g., Levin, 1960; Roemer, 1970; Miller et al., 1974; Kuczynski, 1977).
In addition to problems created by conflicting objectives, problems exist with the interpretation of “wise” or “prudent” management of living marine resources. While every group registers its explicit support for the conservation of the standing stocks, their individual as well as their collective behaviour brings to question whether their members want or know how to pursue conservation practices in the face of the highly variable physical and social environments, especially in the absence of objective (as opposed to subjective) guidelines for carrying out conservation strategies. For example, different groups have cited as their strategies competing theories, such as maximum sustainable yield, maximum economic yield, optimum yield, prudent yield, safe yield, and so on (e.g., Clark, 1976; Gulland, 1974). Yet there are many uncertainties that surround the sustainability of a pelagic fishery under fishing pressure. Thus, many of the models used to explain or to estimate “optimal” catch levels are often no more than crude approximations. Garth Murphy (1977) has suggested that for pelagic fisheries, these models have been of little value (due as much to the nature of these fisheries as to problems with model construction). How useful or consoling to fisheries manager in Peru is the following statement (Murphy, 1977, p. 298)?
As might be expected from the record of steady recruitment, the 1965-1971 fishery appeared stable and well managed, though the industry had clearly overexpanded. By this is meant that simple biomass yield models, such as the logistic and exponential could be fitted, exhibited rather reasonable variance, and all suggested similar maximum sustainable yields of 9.5 – 10.5 million metric tons per annum, a level not far exceeded during any year.
Conflicting interest: Guano versus fishmeal
An example of a conflict between diametrically opposed goals would be instructive. One of the earliest conflicts between objectives that was related to the fishery took place between those seeking to exploit the anchoveta and the Guano Administration Company's repersentatives7 who opposed such exploitation. The Guano Administration represented an extractive industry dominated by the traditional elite in Peru. A threat to its interests was seen in any effort to exploit the anchoveta (Murphy, 1954; see also Kesteven, 1981). Despite the fact that the Guano Administration Company was among the first to experiment with exploiting from the whole anchoveta for the production of fishmeal (as opposed to fish byproducts from the fish canning operations), it vigorously opposed any new attempts to establish such an industry.
In 1950, however, a whole fish reduction plant was clandestinely established along the Peruvian coast. A few years later, when the market prices for guano and agricultural exports were declining (a quasi-periodic event) and the demand prices for fishmeal were increasing, President Odria's market-oriented policies gave those interested in developing a fishmeal industry a major boost. Despite repeated attempts throughout the 1950's by the guano “lobby” to restrict the annual landings of anchoveta (e.g., Caravedo p. 110), fishmeal industry as well as associated industries such as shipbuilding, processing plant construction, net manufacture, gear production, etc., developed rapidly (e.g., Freyre, 1965, p. 406).
The debate between the fishmeal producers and the Guano Administration Company and its agro-exporting supporters centered on the possible combined effect of the exploitation of the anchoveta by both the fishermen and the guano birds. In the absence of scientifically-based stock assessments in the early years of the industry, there was little if any hard evidence on which to oppose the development of a foreign-exchange-producing industrial fishery. Commenting on this, Manuel Eleguera, one of the first Peruvians to participate in the development of Peru's fishmeal industry, noted (1964, p. 54) that
7 Through the mismanagement of the exploitation of the guano resource (the mining of it at rates faster than it could be replenished), the guano industry was clearly on its way to destruction by the end of the 1800's. To bring about a rational exploitation of guano, the Guano Administration Company was established by the government in 1909 in order to oversee the extraction of the guano and the protection of the guano- producing birds (Levin, 1960). For decades the Administration managed the exploitation of guano as well as the protection of the guano-producing birds and the enhancement of their productivity (Murphy and Murphy, 1959). Guano production, however, had declined drastically since the fishmeal boom began, dropping from 330,000 tons in 1956 to 52,000 tons in 1970 (Massey, 1972).
In 1955, the government tried to force the fishing industry to restrict its catch to 100,000 tons a year. Even though the catch at that time was about half the suggested quota, the industry strongly opposed the quota system, since there were no studies to justify the measure and because it considered it incompatible with the free enterprise principles applied to all other economic activities in this country.
The government's policies vacillated between supporting the demands of one or the other of the two interest groups until the late 1950's. Smetherman and Smetherman (1972, p. 342) reported that
In 1956, the guano interest pressed the government into ordering a halt on further construction of fishmeal plants until studies were made of the effect on the bird population. This decree was lifted in 1959, marking a defeat for the guano industry.
Once the influence of the guano and agro-exporting elite had been overshadowed by the influence of the potentially lucrative fishmeal industry, there was little interference by government in the industry's operations until 1968. One of the major Peruvian fishmeal producers commented on the fact that industry determined fishmeal production policy, not government. Elegura (1964) noted that
All this impressive industrial complex had been built by the efforts of private enterprise. And even the most important phases of present government and fishing policy are due to initiatives from private enterprise and not to government.
Elgurea also suggested that “If we had left it to government, Peru would never be the fishing giant it is today” (Stroetzel, 165, p. 20).
Government agency objectives
Yet, in spite of industry's dominant role in the growth and development of the fishmeal industry in Peru before 1968, government agencies, too, with their own narrowly defined jurisdictions, pursued different, often conflicting, objectives. By the 1960's, government agencies viewed the fishery as an earner of foreign exchange and as a direct source of government revenue through the implementation of taxation policies for exports and imports. These agencies sought this revenue in order to support development elsewhere (i.e., not in the fishery). This often led to the establishment of regulatory policies that tended to conflict with (and even cancel out) policies pursued by other agencies. Tax credit policies, for example, formulated in the Finance Ministry tended to encourage expansion in fleet and processing capacity which contradicted the policies of those whose objective was the prevention of overfishing by the reduction of overcapacity. As Hammergren (1981, p. 327) has noted, “Even when the government gave tax or credit relief, it tended to encourage further investments in the already overextended industry and to help some marginal operators to hold on longer. ”Thus, if one group benefits from an expansion of processing facilities, that benefit may adversely affect other groups and the resource as well. “Surplus processing capacity encourages plant owners to expand their fleets in order to obtain larger shares of the allowable catch,” as the IMARPE Panel of Experts (1970, p. 376) noted, “thereby permitting them to improve profitability through wider spread of plant overhead and fixed costs that higher plant utilization brings with it”.
There have been several government agencies, as well as the Congress, involved in activities related directly or indirectly to the fishery. According to Hammergren (1981, p. 323), “fishing policy was not coordinated by any single office but was shaped by the diverse (and often conflicting) interest of the various agencies involved, agencies for which fishing policy was not a primary concern…“ There has been no ultimate arbiter of group conflicts, no coordinator of group objectives, no Super-Ministry of Fisheries. In fact, it was not until 1970 that a separate ministry of fisheries was established by President Velasco (this activity had been within the Ministry of Agriculture and its Division of Fishing and Hunting). Not all observers agree, however, that increasingly centralized decisionmaking for the anchoveta fishery is benficial. For example, in an interview in 1976 (Pesca, June-July 1976, p.21), the first fishmeal factory qwner to have his plant nationalized (in 1973) suggested that
The graetest error made with the industry is to give to one man - the Minister of Fishery - the control of the scientific information about the presence of the anchoveta, the control of the marketing of fishmeal and his only power to decide the opportunity to go fishing or not.
In part as a result of fragmentation in the government bureaucracy with respect to the fishing sector, and in part as a result of the successes of the industrialists in exploiting the fishery with little evidence of damage to the resource, it has been difficult to bring into force any viable, widely acceptable, prudent management scheme for the anchoveta, regardless of the government in power. Gulland (1977, p. 7) has commented on the general nature of this point, nothing that “the past the cry ‘do not decide yet, the evidence is not really conclusive’ has prevented timely conservation and management of resources threatened with overexploitation”.
Following the first scientific assessment of the state of the anchoveta stock in 1965, there have been annual responses by fishery managers to the advice of IMARPE's marine scientists. These responses (i.e., fishing regulations) have been controversial with the respect to their effectiveness as administrative measures to protect the resource (e.g., Valdez-Zamudio, 1973)
Scientific uncertainty and conflicting objectives
A major problem for decision makers directly or indirectly responsible for fisheries management is scientific uncertainty. There is enough uncertainity in scientific information about living marine resources that whatever the recommendations of the scientists, even foreign scientific advisers, the validity of their recommendations could be questioned by the entrepreneurs, fishery managers, and high ranking government officials. As Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski (1977, pp. 140–41), an adviser to President Balaúnde, noted
A problem that exists in the relationship between técnico and politicians is the degree to which they trust each other. The politician tends not to believe gloomy predictions by the técnico, who therefore feels he will not be listened to unless he exaggerates…It was only natural for the Executive (in this case, Belaúnde) to be more inclined to listen to rosier predictions.
Such a lack of confidence has hindered the development of trust and credibility between scientist, fishery manager, and policymaker. The general lack of confidence among these groups existed in the 1960's (Kuczynski, 1977) and in the early 1970's as well (Tantalean, 1980), making it somewhat easier for the policymaker to give in to the pressure of the moment (political, economic or other) rather than to act in accordance with the scientific advice. Tantalean Vanini, Fisheries Minister ubder Peri's President Velasco, commented on how he viewed the role of IMARPE scientists (Tantaleán, 1980, p. 247):
IMARPE is an organization to assess and recommend; the final decision of what has to be done has to be with the Chief of the Sector. For example, to determine the opening of the season, its ending, or the closures, first I listened to IMARPE's scientific recommendations, then looked to the needs for foreign exchange, in coordination, with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and coordinated with EPCHAP, which was in charge of commercialization (of fishmeal), read the reports of the boat owners, analyzed the social factors and observed the activities of our neighbours. Naturally, the recommendations of IMARPE should be followed but it should not be thought that the boat owners could not make good recommendations.
As another example, as late as the beginning of 1972, the marine scientists at IMARPE advised the government about the weak anchoveta recruitment of 1971, but politics or wishful thinking appears to have overhidden their scientific advice. As Clark (1977, p. 61) has written.
The event of 1971–72 provides a case in point. By march 1972, when the fishery reopened after 2-month summer closure, it was apparent to the IMARPE that there would be little recruitment. The institute recommended that the fishery remain closed to conserve the spawning stock, but the government allowed that fishery to operate until June, by which time the stock was reduced to a very low level. It seems from this record that the adult stock was simply fished out.
Conflicts between scientific advisers and government representatives appeared again in the mid 1970's. By the time of occurence of the 1976 El Niño, the fishery had not returned to what fisherman, among others, considered to be the “normal” conditions of the 1960's, that is, to the level of catches witnessed during its heyday just six years earlier. Peruvian scientists were calling for an embargo on anchoveta fishing for a few years in order to allow the standing stock to rebuild. At that time the government was in deep financial crisis and, as some suggest, on the edge of bankruptcy. It could not afford to continue support for the fishing sector. Yet the government has nationalized the fishing sector, including the fleet, three years earlier and was subsidizing the fishermen during a period when there was little fishing activity. As mentioned earlier, the Fisheries Minister convened a confidential panel of foreign marine resource experts to assess the advice (and the scientific information on which it is based) of his fisheries advisers. The panel's findingss upheld those fo Peruvian scientists (Ministry of Fishery, 1977, p. 12). Fishing activities for anchoveta off the central coast of Peru were gratly curtailed. In this instance government officials heeded, apparently reluctantly, the advice of the natinal and foreign advisers. In many instances, howevr, such has not been the case. Addressing this general problem, Gulland (1977, p.8) has warned that “Attempts to reassess the scientific evidence for the sake of administrative convenience are unlikely to be to the benefit of science or)except in the very short run) of administration.”
If one wishes to avoid identifying the differing objectives of all groups related to the fisheries, one might separate those groups that seek to conserve the resource from those that seek to derive an immediate benefit from its exploitation, with little “objective” regard to conservation. The aim of the former group could generally be represented by a statement from the IMARPE (1970) report that placed conservation before immediate profit by nothing that “The first objective of any system of regulation and mangem,ent of the anchoveta fishery must be to ensure the continuation of the substantial contribution to the Peruvian economy.”
The goals of the latter group have generally centered on the economic value derived from exploiting the anchoveta fishery either directly by fishing or processing the fish; or indirectly by building fishing vessels or supplying them with needed gear such, as floats, nets, engines, etc.; or very indirectly by reaping the support of a constituency favouring policies that might adversely affect the fishery. Industrialists, for example, may feel pressured to increase the level of exploitation of a fishery in order to reduce immediate momentary (economic) hardships (Diegues, pers. comm.), giving little regard to the long-term effects of such an increase. In addition, as investors, they may view the fishery in a different light than do other members of society. Popiel and Sosinski (1973, p. 2258) suggested that in general
Fisheries for industrial purposes do not show as much concern for maintaining stocks of fiah as fisheries for food. This comes from a greater flexibility of the former, which having overfished one species can easily shift to another, since the kind of fish exploited is of little importance.
(emphasis mine)
Finally, not all interests in a society have the same political leverage and some interests apparently dominate the political process at a given time. For example, in Peru, the influence of the agro-export and guano interests dominated that of the anchoveta fishmeal intersts only to have their positions later resersed. The influence of the fishmeal interests dominated that of the food fish industry only to have their positions recently reversed. Gulland (1977, p. vii) has suggested that
In practice management policies will have to be determined in each case in the light of current objectives of society (whoever determines what those might be), and of the scientific understanding of the stocks, bearing in mind that they will never be completely accurate.
(emphasis mine)
It is important, therefore, to identify the dominant and subordinate interests in a society for an improved understanding of how a fishery has been or might be manged.
Changes in national government
Brian Rothschild (1973, p. 2022) suggested that “The emphasis based on various objectives is not the same in different political systems; different desires (may exists) for foreign exchange, for ‘status’ in fisheries, and for maintaining options for the future…” The same can be said for changes within political suatems as well. 8
Political authorities at the national level are often the source of broad policy guidelines that establish ground rules by which various economic sectors in society, including isheries, might operate. To date, there have been a dozen changes of government in Peru since 1939, as shown in the following table.
8 Political systems, according to David Easton (1965), can be divided analytically into three components: political authorities, regime, and political community. Political authorities are those in positions of power with day to day responsibilities of government. Regime represents the authoritative rules and structures that provide order to the political interactions within a political system. The political community has been defined as “a group of persons bound together in a political division of labor” and can exist in a tribe, a nation, or a state.
A change of political authorities within a political system (in this case, Peru) can be frequent. While there can be considerable continuity from the policies pursued by one set of authorities to those pursued by another, there can also be considerable change. Not all changes in political authorities will lead to a change in regime, however. In the Peruvian situation, there was a relatively high degree of continuity in development startegies between 1948 and 1968, despite the changes in national leaders. However, changes in political leaders in the 1945 election and the 1968 coup did lead to attempts to change the regime.
| 1939 | to 1945 …………………………………… Manuel Prado y Ugarteche |
| 1945 | (July) to 1948 (October) ………………… Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero |
| 1948 | (November) to 1950 (June) ……………… Manuel A. Odria Amoretti |
| 1950 | (June) to 1950 (July) …………………… Zenon Noriega |
| 1950 | (July) to 1956 (July) …………………… Manuel A. Odria Amoretti |
| 1956 | (July) to 1962 (July) …………………… Manuel Prado y Ugarteche |
| 1962 | (July) to 1963 (March) ………………… Ricardo Perez Godoy |
| 1963 | (March) to 1963 (July) ………………… Nicholas Lindlay Lopez |
| 1963 | (July) to 1968 (October) ………………… Fernando Belaunde Terry |
| 1968 | (October) to 1975 (August) ……………… Juan Velasco Alvarado |
| 1975 | (August) to 1980 (July) ………………… Francisco Morales Bermudez |
| 1980 | (July) to present ………………………… Fernando Belaunde Terry |
On some of these occasions new Peruvian governments pursued policies that were major (if not drastic) changes from those of their predecessors, especially in 1948, 1968, 1975 and 1980. Each new set of government leaders brings with its own political, economic, and social programs, and personnel. Often this calls for changing the national priorities that their predecessors hav elaced on particular economic activities. For example, one government may be more concerned with agrarian reform, another with oil extraction, yet another with the mining sector. The political importance of ministries (and their ministers) rises and falls because of changes in government or because of changes within a government. For example, Kuczynski (1977, pp. 27–28, 76) noted that “expenditures and tax administration fluctuated with the coming and going of each minister. During the Belaúnde administration (1963–68) there were altogether seven holders of the (Minister of Finance) portfolio in slightly more than five years (four in the last year alone).”
Changes in government can also directly affct the leadership of various functional agencies throughout government and, depending on the degree of government involvement in society, throughout the social system as well. More specifically, change in high ranking personnel in ministeries related to the management of fisheries (e.g., the Ministry of Finance) is an important consideration for why the same resources may have been managed in different ways. Kuczynski (1977, p. 77) commented on the linkages between opposing international perspectives toward development and opposing domestic perspectives, nothing that
The early 1960's were the heyday of the conflict between the so-called “ECLA” (U.N.Economic Commission on Latin America) and “IMF” views, and the conflict between (Peru's) Planning Office and the Central Bank tended to mirror the international institutional difference…The prevalence of one point of view or the other certainly made a practical difference in fiscal policy.
To many scholars interested in universal problems, what might appear as a relatively unimportant news item, such as the change of personnel in a government agency, may ultimately prove to have had a profound effect onhow a resource has been managed. For example, such a change in personnel was reported in Peru in 1979 (Fishing News International, February 1979, p. 82):
This relatively unspectacular event did lead to other, move severe changes that were reported the following month (Latin American Economic Report,23 may 1979, p. 93):
The new (fisheries) minister has already been shaking up the management of the industry. He has replaced the official in charge of setting the catch…by (someone) who was head of processing under the previous minister. (The new minister) is also reported to have changed the directors of all four fishing zones.
How changes in national government come about may also be an important consideration for resource mangement (e.g., free elections or military coups). Changes in government bring changes in priorities of specific government programs and can change the ideological foundation fro goverment programs as well. For example, the pretext for military involvement in what might be called a civilian political process often stems from fundamental disagreements between military and civilian liaders concerning the goals of government as well as the menas used to attain them. Thus, military rule imposed now and agin on society can mean radical changes from previous goverment policies. In addition, there are sure to be major changes in the government personnel as military men are placed in key positions throughout the economy. Thus, large swings in the ideological directions of governments and their economic development programs are to be expected.
The military can also influence the operations of government and can intercede in the political process, if its leaders oppose a policy direction that the elected leaders favour. This was the case in Peru in 1962, when it opposed the results of a civilian election. In that instance, the military leadres chose the rule for only one year. In fact, a threat of possible military intervention in the political proces may be sufficient to change the behaviour and th policies of a government.
Peruvian Governments, 1939 - Present
The first Prado government was established in 1938 at the outset of World War II. Prado implemented temporary controls on exports, with the reluctant and ambivalent support of the Peruvian export community. Perhaps the wartime situation, and the belief that the control measures were temporary, allowed the unaffected communities to accept such restrictions. Their expectations proved to be no more than wishful thinking because, as Brown (1965, p. 107) noted,
What they could not realize was that when the timw came for dismantling the controls, Manuel Prado's term would be over and the new president would not only be of different inclination and orientation, but in a political situation where economic policy could not be easily formulated.
In 1945 Bustamante was elected president as a compromise political canditate by a coalition of leftists and conservative supporters. Once elected, Bustamante apparently pursued policies independent of those favoured by his supporters. As aresult, his regime (1945–48) was plagued by internal political dissension between conservative and leftists elements that all but paralyzed the economy (e.b., Brown, 1965). The government's economic policies were concerned with “inflation, deficit spending, exchange controls and devaluation,” and created a relatively undesiracle investment atmosphere for American and other investors (Hunt, 1975, p. 303). According to another author (Roemer, 1970, p. 40)
From 1945 to 1948, the Peruvian government operated exchange controls and kept the sol overvalued in an attempt to transfer income from exporters, who were considered to be congruent with the wealthy class, to those who would benefit from cheaper imports.
Bustamante's attempt at a “contolled economy” was ended by a military takeover of government led by General Manuel Odria. Odria's regimes (1948–50 and 1950–56) developed conservative economic policies that opened up the Peruvian economy to direct foregin investment and to the pursuit of market-oriented policies. Odria favoured a policy of export-led development, relying on the export of traditional primary resources such as guano, copper, silver, zinc, cotton, coffee, and sugar. Unlike other developing countries that exported only a few primary resources, Kyczynski (1977, p. 5) noted that “the growth of exports took place on a broad front, so that Peru acquired a diversified export base.”
Odria's changes in economic policies came at what, in retrospect, seems to have been an opportune moment nationally as well as internationally; the California sardine fishery was on the edge of collapse, there was an increase in demand for fishmeal as a poultry and livestock feed supplement, and there were favourable assessments by foreign scientists of the biological productivity of Peruvian waters. The conditions within Peru for investment in fishing were ripe as well, as Horna (1968, p. 394), among others has noted; “Peru had native capitalists willing to risk money investing in the development of a fish industry”. He commented that, since 1952,
when the public became aware of the handsome profits to be gained in the fish industry, everyone wanted to enter the business. Lawyers, dentists, doctors, engineers, teachers, professors and students formed partnerships to purchase plants and boats. (p. 397)
Another researcher commented on the implications of Odria's policies for the nascent fishing sector (Caravedo, 1977, p. 110):
Since fishing was primarily an export industry, it benefited from Odria's economic policies…This increase was not in response to North American marketing mechanisms as had been the case with the increase that occurred during World War II, but a response to world demand and internal economic policies within Peru.
Thus, the takeover by the conservative military government of Odria in 1948 set the stage for the eventual development of the anchoveta fishery.
Odria's regime was replaced in 1956 with the election of Manual Prado, Peru's president during World War II. The policies of his business-oriented, conservative government concerning foreign investment and export-led development were similar to those pursued by Odria. According to one author (Brown, 1965, pp. 28–30), the following developments within Peru stimulated the growth of the fishmeal industry by the late 1950's: (1) the nylon net, which reduced operating costs for fishing, (2) no noticeable decline in the guano bird population attributable to new fishing factories and (3) the passing of the Industrial Promotion Law, which removed obstacles to the expansion of any industry. To this one could add that a new class of Peruvian nationals was eager to invest in potentially lucrative export schemes (Horna, 1968).
Belaúnde Terry's (1963–1968) government policies were in many ways a continuation of the export-led growth supported by his predecessors (Kyczynski, 1977, p. 48). With respect to the anchoveta fishery, Belaúnde's policy has been described as “one of laissez-faire economics, providing support to the private sector, allowing it to make most of its own decisions. ”As noted earlier, the administration apparently questioned the scientific advice of its técnicos, generally considering them to represent a relatively conservative point of view, especially when the government was more interested in “rosier” projections. In addition to this, the government had its own beliefs about where the hope for the future development of Peru rested. For example, Kuczynski (1977, p. 9) noted that
At the time of the Belaúnde administration, the mining companies held the key to Peru's future prosperity. Mining offered the only opportunity for substantial growth in exports. The other export sectors, such as fishmeal and high grade long staple cotton, appeared to have limited possibilities because production depends on natural supply in the first case or on the availability of irrigated coastal land in the latter.
Belaúnde's government was overthrown in October 1968 by a coup that established military rule under General Velasco. The Velasco regime was ideologically opposed to the economic policies that had been pursued by all of the Peruvian governments since the 1948 Odria coup. The 1968 coup brought to power a leftist military group bent on taking control of the economy away from the established elites. As Jaquette (1975, p. 433) noted, “the Revolutionary Government has made a determined effort to destroy the old power structure rather than accomodate itself to the existing elites”.
The new leftist regime claimed that it was “neither capitalist nor communist” and called for a high degree of government involvement in various sectors of the Peruvian economy and society. Its policies were geared toward direct government control of the vital sectors of the economy through nationalization of oil extraction and of mining ventures, of the fishing sector, of the country's news media, and so forth. It fostered citizen participation in land reform programs and established worker participation in management and ownership of many industrial activities, including the fishing sector (Whyte and Alberti, 1977). Hunt (1975, p. 310), commenting on this change in policy, noted that
From the moment that the armed forces took power in October 1968 and declared Peru to be entered into a revolutionary process, official pronouncements on questions of economic development changed significantly in both language and substance…The change in Peru was particularly abrupt and drastic.
Hammergren considered the 1968 coup a turning point with respect to government interest in the fishing sector “with greater emphasis on centralized planning and government control of the economy” (1981, p. 320). It was as drastic a change with respect to economic policies as was the Odria coup in 1948. Hammergren (1981, p. 317) also noted, however, that “greater government involvement in this sector did not resolve some of the problems of coordination in that sector nor did it lead to less fragmented and less contradictory individual policy decisions”.
In 1970, Velasco appointed General Tantaleán as head of the newly established Ministry of Fisheries, a position he held until 1975. The new government sharply reduced the influence of the National Society of Fisheries. It was well known that this society was extremely influential in the formulation of policies that related to the fishing sector. With the 1968 coup, however, the fisheries society had “almost no influence” among the generals (Goodsell, 1974, pp. 86–89). Hammergren (1981, p. 336) supported this contention, noting that “…because of the government's ideological orientation, the sensitivity of the policymaking system had been lessened to former economic elites like the fishmeal producers in particular.” Still, during the Vesasco regime, expropriation of foreign investments and socialist property ownership programs tended to dominate the Fisheries Ministry's attention. Hammergren (1981, p. 333) commented on one of the effects of the establishment of the new ministry on resource management:
From the Ministry's side several factors encouraged a larger catch. One was the inexperience of the new administrators and the inevitable disorganization following the creation of the new Ministry which meant that the catch was not closely monitored and that decision-makers were less sensitive than they would be later to the problems of resource conservation. …A second factor encouraging large catches was the desire of the new Fisheries Ministry and its Minister to demonstrate their competence.
In 1975 General Morales Bermudez deposed the ailing General Velasco and took over the government. In many respects this military coup (at first viewed as no more than a “palace coup”) was as important for the future of the fishing sector as was the 1968 coup. The takeover represented a victory for the conservative elements in the military over the radical supporters of Velasco. The economy of the country was in poor condition as a result of declining prices for export products and of the financial demands of the development policies pursued by Velasco. Morales' policies were geared to reducing government involvement in many sectors of the economy and society, as witnessed by the denationalization of the fishing fleet in 1976. After a new fisheries minister had been appointed in 1979, it was reported (Latin American Economic Report, 23 March 1979, p. 93) that “it remains to be seen whether, like his predecessor, he will not put state assets up for sale to the private sector, or whether he will follow a line closer to that of General Javier Tantaleán Vanini, who greatly expanded state control of the fishing industry”. In addition, Morales allowed for the preparation and convening of free elections in Peru in 1980. This election returned to power President Belaúnde, who had been ousted in 1968.
The problems associated with changes in government continue for the Peruvian fishing sector(Fishing News International, November 1981):
Pescaperu…lost part of the market when an inexperienced marketing team came in with the new government last year (1980). ‘They broke contact with socialist countries, which were big buyers’…There is a new team now with revised approaches. But they have to recover lost ground.
In the relatively short period of time that the fishing industry underwent very rapid growth (1952 to 1970), Peruvian governments and their policies (and ideological underpinnings) changed frequently, making difficult the formulation, let alone enforcement, of long-term acceptable, “wise” management strategies for the coastal fisheries. These changes in government proceeded in parallel with the optimism of the industrialists about the future availability of the anchoveta resource, encouraging different groups in society to seek the best deal possible for their own interests. It is not difficult to see how changes in government at the national level can affect approaches to economic development which, in turn, can affect for better or for worse the management of Peru's coastal resources.
Summary - National Level
One of the main points of this section is that in addition to the conventional reference to conflicts between major groups, i.e., fishing community, government officials, and fishery managers, there are conflicting views (and therefore conflicting objectives) within these groups as well. Attention has been focused on a factor that affects fisheries management at the national level - changes in political authorities. This is an aspect that is seldom addressed at meetings on fisheries management, because in many countries there is a separation of science and politics. The marine science community is often unable to openly challenge policy decisions once they are taken.
Scientists provide one piece of information to policy makers who then must weight that information with other places that have been provided, for example, by the Central Bank, or by industry. Thus, fishery managers might find that they must go against the recommendations of their scientists in order to meet some other pressing need. As an example of this, Fishing News International (February 1981) reported that “the (private) canners…are competing with Pescaperu, the state fishmeal production and marketing company, which estimates it needs a catch of 1.8 million tons just to cover costs.” But what is needed is not an “either-or” decision with respect to societal objectives and scientific information. What is needed is a greater degree of sensitivity by fisheries managers and scientists to the concern of the other. Perhaps the following statement (FAO, Redefining Fisheries Management, 1981b) underscores the need for this heightened sensitivity:
When biological objectives reigned supreme, the administrator did little more than reject or rubber stamp the recommendations made by scientists. With objectives that are wider and less easily defined quantitatively, the importance of the decisionmaker increases. It becomes the fishery manager's job to work toward socioeconomic goals that may well conflict with objectives that might be selected on purely technical grounds where political conflict or social costs would not be major consideration.
