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EL NIÑO · THE SEAFOOD ECONOMY

Following the Fish

El Niño is the ocean's thermostat. Turn it, and the warm pool slides thousands of kilometres across the Pacific — the tuna chase it east, Peru's anchovy lose the cold upwelling they live on, and Chile's salmon suffocate in warm-water algal blooms. The fish move; the prices follow. Drag the dial and watch it happen.
Current ocean state: —
01 · WHERE THE TUNA ARE

The warm pool drags the tuna east

Skipjack — the tuna in your can — live in the top 100 m and follow water warmer than 28 °C. That "warm pool" sloshes east in El Niño and west in La Niña, and the fishing fleets (and the island nations' licence revenue) move with it. Drag the dial.
Neutral
ONI 0.0 °C
La Niña −2.50El Niño +2.5
Warm pool (>28 °C) — tuna habitat Cold tongue — upwelling Skipjack school Pacific island waters (PNA) holding fish
02 · WHY IT HAPPENS

One tilt of the thermocline, two fisheries

A side-view of the equatorial Pacific. The thermocline is the boundary between warm surface water and the cold deep. In La Niña it tilts up steeply in the east, so cold, nutrient-rich water wells up and anchovy thrive. In El Niño it flattens and deepens — the upwelling shuts off (anchovy crash) and the warm layer spreads east (tuna follow). Same dial, same mechanism.
Neutral
ONI 0.0 °C
La NiñaNeutralEl Niño
03 · THE PRICE CHAIN

Anchovy → fishmeal → your salmon dinner

Peru's anchoveta is the largest fishery on Earth — and almost all of it is ground into fishmeal and oil that feed farmed salmon. When El Niño starves the anchovy, the feed bill for every salmon farm on the planet climbs. Move the dial to El Niño and watch the chain light up.
Neutral
ONI 0.0 °C
La NiñaNeutralEl Niño
4.4 Mt
avg yearly anchoveta catch — the world's largest single-species fishery
~98%
of the catch reduced to fishmeal & fish oil — most of it for aquaculture feed
—
modelled fishmeal-price pressure at the current dial setting (2023 El Niño: landings −50%, fishmeal output −28%)
04 · CASE STUDY · SUMMER 2016

The bloom that killed 39 million salmon

A strong El Niño warmed Chile's Patagonian fjords and weakened their stratification. The result was the largest fish-killing algal bloom ever recorded — and a textbook supply shock: Chile's loss became Norway's windfall.
FEB
Warm El Niño fjords
Higher sea-surface temps + low river inflow weaken stratification in Reloncaví.
MAR
Record algal bloom
Pseudochattonella explodes — the worst fish-killing HAB ever recorded.
MAR
~39M salmon die
~12–20% of Chile's annual production; ~$800M lost; 40,000+ t of biomass.
JUN
US price +54%
Chilean salmon jumps from ~$3.50 to ~$4.97 /lb in months.
→
Norway fills the gap
Cold northern farms, untouched, capture the higher price.
U.S. import price for Chilean salmon, 2016 — a +54% surge as supply vanished. Northern-hemisphere growers, in colder unaffected water, were the beneficiaries.
05 · KNOW YOUR TUNA

Five tuna, five fisheries

Where each lives in the water column decides how it's caught — and how El Niño hits it.
Bigeye sink with the thermocline: as El Niño deepens the warm layer in the east, longline catch rates shift. Skipjack, at the surface, simply ride the warm pool east.