The Briefing
- Warm coastal waters tied to El Niño have pushed Peru's anchovy quota to its lowest point in ten years, and worldwide fishmeal output is tracking roughly a quarter under 2025 levels.
- A metric ton of fishmeal fetched about $2,500 on the spot market in May, some 25% higher than the last El Niño cycle's peak, driving up feed bills for farmed salmon and shrimp.
- Peru halted its anchovy fleet in June once young, undersized fish began dominating the nets, and meteorologists expect the warming trend to hold through early 2027.
Two Countries, One Broken Supply Chain
Nearly every bag of fishmeal that reaches an aquaculture farm somewhere in the world traces back to boats working off Peru and Chile. Those two fleets turn small, oily fish into the protein concentrate that fattens farmed salmon, shrimp and other species raised in pens and ponds, so when the catch dries up, feed bills climb everywhere from Norway to Ecuador. Right now the catch has dried up in a hurry: output plunged 28% versus the same quarter a year earlier, March alone came in 38% lower, and the running total through April was still down 26%, per figures compiled by IFFO, the marine-ingredients trade group that pools reporting from a dozen producing nations.
One weather system explains most of it. A coastal El Niño has warmed the ocean off both countries, weakening the cold-water upwelling that draws schools of anchovy toward shore and instead filling nets with far more young, undersized fish than fishery managers can permit landed.
Peru's Allowance Falls to Its Smallest in a Decade
Peru's Humboldt Current grounds make up the single biggest fishery on the planet built around one species, and in a typical year they alone generate close to a fifth of the fishmeal made worldwide. Heading into 2026, the country's fisheries authority capped the North-Central anchovy season at 1.9 million metric tons — down about 36% from the 3 million tons permitted in 2025 and, as SeafoodSource noted when the season opened, the smallest cap the fishery has seen in ten years.
Officials also moved the launch date up, into early April, betting that starting sooner would beat the worst of the warming. Jessica Luna, who leads Peru's national fisheries society, had pressed for that earlier start, telling regulators that a mid-April opening would mean crews arriving to water so hot "we won't find any resources."
The early start bought little time. Undersized anchovy accounted for over half of certain hauls by the first days of June, and boats had banked barely one-quarter of the already-shrunken quota before officials pulled the plug on the season. The shutdown, which began in May and has been renewed several times since, remained open-ended months later, according to a separate SeafoodSource report on the repeated extensions.
Chile's Boats Are Coming Back Empty Too
South of the border, Chilean pelagic fleets are logging a comparable slump. Total landings through the first six months of 2026 trailed well behind the same period a year prior, and processor Camanchaca disclosed a 46% drop in the pelagic fish it handled over that stretch, blaming scarce jack mackerel and anchovy tied to the same ocean-warming pattern, per an Undercurrent News report on the company's results. Just as in Peru, so many juveniles are turning up in Chilean nets that regulators have limited how aggressively boats can pursue the adult fish still out there.
Aquaculture Feels the Pinch at the Feed Trough
Scarcity translated into price almost immediately. Spot fishmeal touched roughly $2,500 a metric ton in May — about a quarter more expensive than during the previous severe El Niño stretch in 2023 and 2024 — based on an industry review published by Aquaculture Magazine. Audun Lem, who serves as the United Nations' deputy director for fisheries and aquaculture, warned that the pricier ingredients "will add to production costs for aquaculture producers" that rely on marine feed to raise salmon, shrimp and comparable species. Fish oil supplies have eroded more slowly than fishmeal, offering processors some cushion, yet the overall marine-ingredients trade stays tight as buyers chase a thinner slice of South American output.
Little Relief Ahead
Forecasters aren't offering much hope. IFFO's newest review found both countries' output still lagging well behind historical averages heading into the back half of 2026, and the organization stated flatly that "El Niño conditions ... are forecast to persist into early 2027", a timeline that could keep pressure on the fishery even as officials draft next season's limits. Until the water cools, feed buyers and fish farmers are stuck footing the bill for a Pacific climate pattern that has now hammered this supply chain twice in three years.
