CHIMBOTE, Peru — Peru’s production ministry on Friday authorized the year’s second anchovy fishing season with a quota of 1.9 million metric tons, a cautious figure that reflects warming surface waters off the coast and sent the price of fishmeal to a 14-month high.
The anchoveta, a finger-length fish that swarms in the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current, supports the largest single-species fishery on earth and supplies roughly a fifth of the world’s fishmeal, the protein that feeds farmed salmon in Norway and Chile and shrimp in Asia. Peru’s catch, worth about $2.5 billion a year in exports, rises and falls with the ocean, and this year the ocean is warming.
A survey by the Peruvian Marine Research Institute in September found the anchovy biomass at 7.8 million tons, down from 10.4 million in the same survey last year, with much of the stock concentrated deeper and farther south than normal. Sea surface temperatures off the central coast are running 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above average, a pattern the institute said was consistent with the early stages of an El Niño event, though it stopped short of declaring one.
“When the water warms, the fish go down and the boats cannot reach them,” said Dr. Mariela Quispe Huamán, a fisheries biologist at the institute. “The quota is a bet that the warming stays moderate. If it does not, the boats will not catch it anyway.”
The season, which opens Nov. 1 in the north-central zone, could be closed early if the juvenile share of the catch exceeds 10 percent, a rule introduced after a collapse in 2014 that left fishmeal plants idle for a year.
In Chimbote, the fishing port 400 kilometers north of Lima that processes much of the catch, the lower quota was met with resignation. The town’s 20 fishmeal plants employ 15,000 people directly, and a short season means short paychecks. “Last year we worked 48 days. This year maybe 30,” said Wilmer Saavedra, a boat captain who has fished anchoveta for 29 years. “The fish decide. We just follow them.”
Industry groups had lobbied for a quota of 2.3 million tons, arguing that the survey undercounted fish in deep water. Environmental organizations countered that the government should have set it closer to 1.5 million, noting that seabird colonies along the coast, which depend on the same fish, have had two poor breeding years.
The decision matters far beyond Peru. Fishmeal futures rose 9 percent in Shanghai on Monday, and salmon producers in Norway warned that feed costs could rise in the first quarter. Alternatives such as insect meal and algae oil remain small, supplying less than 3 percent of the aquaculture feed market.
In Chimbote harbor on Saturday, crews were painting hulls and mending nets. The boats, Mr. Saavedra said, would be ready on Nov. 1 regardless. “We will go out and see what the sea has.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 4 of the European edition with the headline: Peru Sets a Cautious Anchovy Quota as Warm Waters Return to the Pacific.
