(Avenida Cristóbal Colón 2400)

Blumar is a seafood company located in Chile and one of the top producers in the country. In 2024, fishmeal and fish oil accounted for almost a fifth of the company’s total revenue.¹

Blumar owns six vessels, the Cobra, Don Alfonso, Don Edmundo, Erika, Rapanui, and Yelcho I, according to Sernapesca, the Chilean Fishery Service.² The vessels are all purse seiners registered in Valparaiso.

Don Alfonso: The Don Alfonso was previously accredited by DNV, a Danish company providing classification, certification, and risk assessment on shipping vessels, but was suspended by DNV on August 5, 2024, after DNV found on May 31, 2024 that several of the ship’s safety features needed repair and Blumar failed to make the repairs by the June 28, 2024 deadline. On February 5, 2025, the Don Alfonso was withdrawn from DNV’s class after it failed to repair its engine.³

Erika: The Erika was also suspended and later withdrawn by DNV, on February 5, 2025, after DNV found the ship’s windlass breaking lines needed repair and that the vessel needed new emergency generator documentation and a new class certification on May 30, 2024, and Blumar failed to make the necessary updates by DNV’s August 31, 2024 deadline.⁴ Following a deadly algal bloom that caused widespread salmon mortality in the Los Lagos and Aysén regions in early 2021, the dead fish were transported by the Erika and Duqueco vessel to the Landes fish processing plant in Talcahuano, Biobío Region, for processing into fishmeal and fish oil.⁵ Flavia Liberona, executive director of Terram Foundation, an environmental non-profit organization, said “The high mortality of fish must be removed, but in doing so, it spreads to other places. Additionally, we are facing an emergency here, where the necessary biosecurity measures for this type of case are likely not being considered.”⁶ Residents of Talcahuano filed a legal appeal with the Court of Appeals of Concepción to stop the continued arrival of the dead fish, citing fears of bay contamination and potential ecological harm.⁷

Cobra: On the morning of March 30, 2025, the captain of the Cobra got a call from the captain of a neighboring ship, who gave him a heads up about where he had seen a large school of fish.⁸ The Cobra turned to head toward these fishing grounds, and it soon collided with a small albacore boat named the Bruma.⁹ The smaller boat was crushed and its seven crew members disappeared.¹⁰ Roughly a week later, after the crew of the Cobra returned to shore, the lookout who had been on the ship on the night of the collision disappeared, and his body was discovered several days later.¹¹ Officials determined that he had died by suicide.¹² In August 2025, the lookout’s son told prosecutors that his father told his family that the crew of the Cobra knew they collided with the smaller vessel, because it felt like, “they had crashed into a house.”¹³ On December 6, 2025, the Biobío Regional Prosecutor's Office asked the Coronel Guarantee Court to formally charge three officers from the Cobra for culpable homicide, and Blumar S.A. for criminal responsibility.¹⁴

In February 2023, the Redacamo lagoon in Talcahuano turned red, and the provincial health ministry found that this “was caused by the poor handling of wastewater from the Blumar and Landes fishing plants,” according to a government document obtained by Resumen Chile.¹⁵ Health inspectors set a pause on fishing in the lagoon until the investigation concluded, reported Sabes.¹⁶ The industrial waste caused “unpleasant odors” and killed dozens of fish and other animals in the lagoon, according to a Facebook post by La Editorial.¹⁷ On March 16, 2023, a contractor who was hired to install cameras at the factory fell to his death, possibly after getting electrocuted, according to a Facebook post by ClickTV Chile.¹⁸ The worker’s death was investigated by the regional director of Labor and local police, who ruled it an accident.¹⁹

On November 23, 2023, Blumar was charged with exceeding the maximum authorized production of salmon for the 2019 - 2020 production season.²⁰ This violation can carry a fine of up to 5,000 annual tax units, or $3.75 million.²¹ In January 2024, a deadly algal bloom caused the sudden death of almost 5,000 tons of salmon in the Aysén region. The affected fish farms were owned by Blumar and Aquachile. The dead fish were transported to fishmeal processing plants in Cabulco, Aysén and Los Lagos.²²

Blumar did not respond to a request for comment.²³