1. HISTORICAL ASPECTS

Sea cage farming in Chile is only applied in salmon production. Salmon farming started in the 80s in Chile.

In 1988, 16 farms produced 3,400 tonne and there were 178 authorized farming sites, with a production projection of 15,000 tonne as per the technology applied at that time.
The geographical location of the farms was determined by the proximity to areas that provide good access and services such as roads, energy, and other vital needs. Those initial sites were easily accessible and very concentrated in Chiloé (Los Lagos Region) which contained 86 percent of the country’s allocated farm sites (Mendez & Munita, 1989). That happened under almost no regulations to establish sites, except some nonstandardized evaluations and an approval process by the Undersecretary of Fisheries (SUBPESCA) and the National Direction of Maritime Territory (DIRECTEMAR). At that time it was expected that the recently established official standard for minimum distance of 1,5 miles (2,41 Km) between farms could diminish the number of sites while also minimizing speculators that had flooded the Maritime Authority with requests for allocation and use of unoccupied places. The regions of Aysén and Magallanes, with abundant sites, did not attract much interest due to the limited logistic support available for farm operations (Mendez & Munita, 1989).
Twenty six years later (2015) the salmon industry has more than 350 sea sites under operation, over 1300 total licenses approved, distributed in Los Lagos, Aysén and Magallanes regions, producing around 800,000 tonne per year. An entire system establishing Appropriated Areas for Aquaculture, Macro zones, Neighbourhoods and Licenses or Concessions, are the spatial base of the industry.

Until 1988 the rapid industry growth exceeded the capacity of the Government to establish an adequate regulation. Just a few nonconnected legal instruments were behind this initial development. Those were the articles 12 to 18 of the D.S. N° 175 (1980) of the Ministry of Economy on Fisheries activities and D.S. 162 (1985) from the same Ministry ruling on the disease control in salmon species. Additionally D.S. 223 (1968) of the Defense Ministry (Navy) ruling on marine licenses was relevant. Just as in 1988 the D.S. 99 of the Ministry of Economy established the minimum distance above referred, initiating territorial regulation of the activity (Mendez & Munita, 1989). With the General Law of Fisheries and Aquaculture (GLFA) in 1991 licenses and authorizations for aquaculture were clearly defined and their authorization subjected to several requirements, including that they should be located in authorized areas for aquaculture. In 2003 through the D.S. 125 (Ministry of Economy) the National Policy of aquaculture expressed an objective “to promote maximum economic growth of Chilean aquaculture along the time, in a framework of environmental sustainability and equity in access to the activity.”
In legal terms it is important to highlight that the GLFA was followed in 1994 by Law 19,300 of the General Basis of Environment that introduced the EIA system in Chile also impacting aquaculture. Also the GLFA was followed by the National Policy for the use of the Coastal zone, D.S. 475 (1995) of the Ministry of Defense, that requests coastal zoning establish areas of preferential use including aquaculture. Thus, from the early nineties, licensing and zoning in aquaculture were modulated in several ways.