This month I interviewed the Regional Director for Latin America of the Food and Agriculture Org (FAO) and the Senior Fisheries and Aquaculture Officer of the FAO. They explained the mission of the FAO in relation to improving global food security through aquaculture and their current project in Chile helping small fishing and aquaculture communities adapt to climate change. I also interviewed the former regional director of the CORFO, Chile’s economic development agency, about aquaculture as a means to increase Chile’s economic competitiveness. Then I interviewed the director of CORFO’s Mussel Industry Program about their strategies to increase mussel production and the history of the industryin Chile.

I attended a conference about organic aquaculture certification and how the industry plans to increase sustainability. I also made a trip to Santiago to participate in the CEPAL Dialogo del Nexo de Agua, Energia y Alimentacion. This dialog was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the world’s five regional commission of the United Nations. The premise was to discuss the increasing interdependencies of water, energy, and food in each country and how national management of these resources can become more integrated in order to achieve sustainability. CEPAL with the support of the German development agency GIZ will continue to provide technical assistance and fund studies in individual countries to help develop policies and systems that support Nexus management.

I assisted a professor in the first week of a two-year long study of the Rio Puelo basin that flows into the Reloncavi Fjord in the Los Lagos Region. We sampled different points of Rio Puelo- from the basin of Llanada Grande to the convergence with fjord Reloncavi- to measure pesticide content and type, dissolved organic material, silicic acid, determine prevailing winds, and monitor fjord/river conditions with a buoy in Reloncavi. These results will be some of the first long-term data records ever established of Rio Puelo and are also important for aquaculture. Several measurements are indicators of how climate change and human influence will impact phytoplankton blooms which kill or poison mussels and salmon.

I formatted and analyzed mussel farm and mussel seed collection data for the Los Lagos Region in Excel. This data will eventually be used to create maps to visually represent where the concentrations of farming takes place and thus which areas are most vulnerable to climate change. This data still needs further work as there are many errors and we will continue to improve it with field visits.

In the near future I will attend the yearly conference in Castro, Chiloe for the mussel industry, hosted by the Technological Institute for Mussel Culture (INTEMIT). This is a very important conference as all industry leaders will attend and I will have the opportunity to meet farmers. I plan to also make a farm visit this month to do a producer interview. We will be confirming the government data of mussel farm locations by making farm visits and using drone images. This is necessary after we analyzed the existing data and realized there are many inconsistencies and under-reporting.

This month I helped a professor with his first field expedition of his project. Since it was the first time sampling there were a lot of adjustments that needed to be made and he needed more hands to trail equipment. There were more than a few failures but the overall field work was successful and we were able to finish all sampling sites and set up the first oceanographic buoy to monitor the influence of Rio Puelo on Reloncavi Fjord. I also helped a colleague with English translation of an article he was writing.