View of Punta Arenas with the Strait of Magellan in Patagonia, Chile, where the world's leading scientists and researchers on HABs will meet next year.
Photo: Adobe Stock.
Next year, from October 19 to 24, 2025, Chile will be the host country of the largest international scientific meeting on harmful algal blooms (HABs). The 21st International Conference on Harmful Algae (ICHA) will be held in Punta Arenas, Magallanes and the Chilean Antarctic Region - the southernmost area of Chilean Patagonia - and will bring together the world's leading scientists and researchers in the field.
According to ICHA's website, HABs represent a pressing global issue marked by a rise in frequency, scope, and impact. "The increase in these events is attributed to several factors, such as nutrients increments in the water column due to human activities, ballast waters, advancements in science and technology geared towards studying these events, and extreme oceanographic climate fluctuations, such as El Niño and La Niña, the Antarctic Oscillation, as well as the broader effects of climate change," it explains.
Scientists and researchers addressing these HABs events will meet in one year at the Dreams Hotel in Punta Arenas, where the 2025 edition of the conference will bring together some 500 attendees from at least 50 countries. Registration will be open from January 13, 2025, while the deadline for oral and panel presentations will be January 20, 2025.
Although this will be the first time that the International Conference on Harmful Algae will be held in Chile, the choice of the country and, more specifically, the city of Punta Arenas as the venue for the 21st edition of ICHA is no coincidence. Nestled on the northern coast of the Strait of Magellan, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and gateway to the Antarctic continent, this region of Chile is recognized worldwide as a natural laboratory.
With fjords, channels, islands, glaciers, mountains, forests, steppes, and unique wildlife, the Magallanes Region is also recognized globally as a 'hot spot' for harmful algal blooms events, underscoring its scientific importance. In addition, along with Aysén and Los Lagos, it is one of the three main farmed salmon production zones in Chile.
It was precisely in the third of these areas, in Los Lagos, where just over a year ago, in November 2024, the Chilean salmon industry suffered a major setback after a massive salmonid mortality event as a consequence of a harmful algal bloom in the Reloncavi estuary. The Chilean National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) related it to the presence of harmful algae but ruled out red tide and dissociated it from the El Niño phenomenon.
As mentioned, harmful algal blooms are a natural phenomenon caused by multiple climatic and environmental factors, which generate a numerical increase of one or several species of microalgae in the water. According to Sernapesca, the cause of last year's mortality event in the Reloncavi estuary was specifically the microalgae Thalassiosira pseudonana, an algal that acts by lodging in the gills of fish, causing internal damage and death by asphyxiation.
Precisely Sernapesca, together with other public and private institutions, will support the organization and dissemination of the event, which is led by the Institute for Fisheries Development (IFOP) and Magallanes University (UMAG). ICHA is an initiative of the International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae (ISSHA) and is the main world conference on these harmful algal blooms events.
Its main objective is to provide a platform to showcase the degree of progress of scientific and technological knowledge on HABs -from molecular biology to the use of satellite images-, which will be exposed to the international scientific audience, as well as decision-makers from both the public and private sectors, who will attend the conference in Punta Arenas.
In Chile, the organization of the 21st edition of the International Conference on Harmful Algae is being carried out by more than 60 national scientists belonging to various institutions, led by IFOP and UMAG, but with the collaboration of six other universities in the country, institutions such as the Chilean Salmon Technology Institute (Intesal), Chile's Undersecretariat of Fisheries (Subpesca), the Chilean National Oceanographic Committee (CONA), and the Undersecretariat of Public Health (SSP), or private companies such as Plancton Andino.
Before arriving in Punta Arenas, in the last 40 years, these biannual conferences have been held in many different countries. The most recent ones were held in Japan (Hiroshima, 2023), Mexico (La Paz, 2021), France (Nantes, 2018), Brazil (Florianópolis, 2016), and New Zealand (Wellington, 2014), among others.