Southern Blue Whiting

Southern blue whiting (Micromesistius australis) is a cold-water, schooling deepwater fish of the southern oceans, with its main commercial range split between two very different fisheries: the sub-Antarctic grounds south of New Zealand and the Southwest Atlantic / Southeast Pacific system around the Falkland Islands, Argentine Patagonia, and southern Chile. Around New Zealand, the fishery is concentrated on the southern spawning grounds and is managed as four separate stocks based on spawning areas: Campbell Island, Pukaki Rise, Bounty Platform, and Auckland Islands Shelf. The species is taken almost entirely by mid-water and semi-pelagic trawl at depths of roughly 250-600 m, and New Zealand remains the dominant producing country by volume, with a 2025/26 commercial catch allowance of 51,326 tonnes and an actual 2025 catch of 22,572 tonnes.

In the Falkland Islands, Argentina and Chile complex, the species has a local name: Polaca, and is treated as a shared southern stock with the Falklands stock assessment allowing catch of 83,158 tonnes and a precautionary overall catch limit of about 25,280 tonnes for the combined Falklands, Argentina, and Chile system. Within that southern stock, the Falkland Islands’ own recommended catch limit was estimated at 1,502-2,796 tonnes, although recent real catches there have been tiny: only 15.2 tonnes in 2025, the lowest on record. Historically, Falklands catches were taken mainly from August to September in the southwest, south, and east, with some March-April western fishing and, in earlier years, October-January catches in the east and southeast. Argentina remains the larger Atlantic producer, with a 2025 maximum permissible catch of 28,000 tonnes with no real catches, while Chile’s fishery has been managed under much tighter quotas, with the 2026 quota set at 2,856 tonnes and the stock officially classified as depleted.

From a product perspective, southern blue whiting is valued less for prestige than for processing performance. It offers white flesh, delicate texture, moist flake, and low oil content, and is used mainly in HG, serving further as a raw material for fillets, breaded and battered formats, surimi, and the leftovers are utilized into the fishmeal. Southern Blue Whiting is an industrial whitefish, built for volume, flexibility, and export utility rather than premium image.