Chilean salmon farmer Camanchaca has revised the mortality figures at its storm-hit Islotes salmon production site in Chile's southern Los Lagos region to nearly 400,000.
The incident is expected to reduce the company's 2020 Atlantic salmon harvest by nearly 2,200 metric tons, approximately 4 percent of the estimated annual total.
"As a consequence ... the company concludes that, after applying the corresponding insurance, the impact on results after taxes in the second quarter of 2020 will be close to $2.9 million (€2.6 million), corresponding to net losses from biomass loss, expenses in excess of insurance over-limits, and for assets damaged and not covered by insurance," it said.
"Unusual weather conditions" damaged the company's seawater site in May, impacting its structures consisting of two modules of 12 cages each, with an initial stock of 1,765,776 fish, and an average weight of 2.6 kilograms.
As of June 6, the work of moving fish from the affected module to the other unimpacted one, consisting of 536,531 fish has been completed, the company said in a stock exchange announcement.
The incident has led to a mortality of 387,837 fish, or 22 percent of the initial stock of the Islotes site.
"This mortality has turned out to be higher than initially anticipated and reported, since the assessment on the last cages showed a more unfavorable survival rate," said Camanchaca.
The labor and operational procedures were slowed down due to the complexity of the operation, bad weather conditions and the pandemic.
Additionally, from the beginning of the incident, escape mitigation plans were fully deployed, including two fishing boats on site to support capture of any escaped fish.
To date, Camanchaca has recaptured 9,900 fish, out of an estimated total of 38,316 escaped fish, that equals to a recovery of 25.8 percent of the escapes.
