One of the largest nursery grounds of the blue whale is threatened by the expansion of the global salmon farming industry, a prize-winning conservationist warned yesterday.
The hitherto unknown feeding and nursery area for hundreds of the world’s largest animals was discovered off Chiloé island, near the Corcovado Gulf, in Northern Patagonia, Chile five years ago.
The find thrilled the scientific world and later featured in the BBC TV series, Planet Earth, but the area has quickly been overshadowed by concern.
The near-pristine waters of Northern Patagonia are under threat from the Chilean salmon farming industry, striving to overtake Norway as the biggest producer on Earth, Rodrigo Hucke-Gaete, a marine biologist, told an award ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society.
Dr Hucke-Gaete, 33, was in London to be presented with a £60,000 gold award by the Whitley Foundation, said that salmon farms, often financed by investors from the northern hemisphere, were expanding southwards down the coast of Chile into the area which is also a refuge for humpback whales.
The Southern Hemisphere population of blue whales is thought to be less than 2,000 after 350,000 blue whales were killed there between 1904 and when they were finally protected in 1967.
Dr Hucke-Gaete explained: "The expansion of the industry brings the threat of collisions with nets, also increased debris – whether nets, ropes or plastic bags – which are floating right where the whales are feeding.
"Salmon nets are beginning to appear in the stretches between the islands, increasing the risk of entanglement. We are also worried about the increased used of chemicals and antibiotics and the increase in nutrients which could change the ecosystem and affect the food of the whales, the krill."
The organisation he founded, the Blue Whale Centre, has been working for six years monitoring the damage to the area and trying to persuade the Government and local communities to agree to a conservation plan that would zone the salmon farms so they are less dangerous to whales and the marine ecosystem.
Dr Hucke-Gaete added: "I hope winning a Whitley Award, one of the most prestigious conservation awards in the world tells Chile that this is a good idea and that we can work together to make this happen, so blue whales can come back from the brink of extinction to a healthy population around the world."
Edward Whitley, chairman of the judges, said: "We are backing this project because of the conservation urgency. It needs to be designated as a marine reserve."
The joint winner of the gold award, Cagan Sekercioglu, 32, is a graduate of Harvard and Stanford universities who turned down a Wall Street career to work in a wetland in Kars provice of north west Turkey, where there are 160 species of bird, including the globally endangered white-headed duck and Egyptian vulture.
The lake, where temperatures in winter drop to minus 20 C, is threatened by agricultural intensification.