Chile's salmon rush.

• Author: Luxner, Larry

On a cold July afternoon four men armed with long nets stand on a platform in the middle of a vast blue lake, while the snow-crowned summit of Osorno, Chile's Mount Fuji-like volcano, pokes through the clouds. The tranquility is broken only by the men's drones of "cinco, cinco" as they use their nets to scoop up salmon, in groups of five, and flip them back into submerged cages. Standing close by is a fifth man, who clicks a hand-held device at each "cinco" until nearly four thousand fish have been counted and placed in the proper cage.

The strange ritual continues until sunset, when the men--tired from the day's work--finally board a launch for the fifteen-minute trip back to shore, and head for their homes in the small towns that line the lake.

The men, all on the payroll of Pesquera Mares Australes, are among six thousand people directly employed by Chile's booming salmon-export industry. Julio Bahamande, manager of operations here, says Mares Australes is one of eight companies with salmon operations in Lago Llanquihue--the largest of several pristine lakes in southern Chile ideally suited to the business of salmon cultivation. Other lakes in the area also involved in salmon cultivation include Ranco, Puyehue, Rupanco, Chapo, and Yelcho.

Southern Chile's Lake District has long been the destination of travelers, poets, seekers, and settlers. Early navigators became lost there in the maze of fjords--perhaps lulled by the region's tranquility and beauty--as they searched in vain for an outlet to the Pacific. To the Mapuche, it is said, the Lakes are the meeting place of God and man. The poet Pablo Neruda longed to return there, writing over a half-century ago of "southern weather, weather of the fleet fish in the heavens of water," of "Lonoche, Lonquimay, Carahue, large on the summits, circled by roots and serenities."

Today, the Lake District is becoming renowned as a commercial export center as well. Although the fish might not be in the schools Neruda wrote about--export salmon are raised in submerged cages--all across southern Chile salmon producers are breaking records as local and overseas investors realize the country's enormous export potential. By the end of 1993, in fact, Chile shipped 61,000 tons of salmon to the United States, Japan, and elsewhere--easily breaking the previous year's figure of 47,000 tons, and surpassing Canada as the world's second-largest salmon exporter, after Norway.

Chile's other competitors in the salmon-export industry include Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark's Faeroe Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (Maine).

"Ten years ago, salmon represented zero income for the region," says Francisco Ariztia Reyes, general manager of Ventisqueros S. A., another major salmon producer. "Today, the industry exports $200 million a year, of which there's an associated investment of $150 million. To produce this amount, we have expenses of $140 million, which we inject into the economy."

Some 90 percent of the country's salmon exports originate in Chile's Tenth Region, which encompasses the area from Lago Calafquen south to Rio Palena; another 5 percent comes from the Eleventh, extending from Rio Palena to south of Lago O'Higgins, and the remaining 5 percent is...