A review of the world marine gastropod fishery: Evolution of catches, management and the Chilean experience

Marine mollusks are among the most important invertebrate fisheries in the world. The main classes of mollusk fished are Cephalopoda, Bivalvia and Gastropoda. Marine gastropods represent approximately 2% of the mollusks fished in the world. Several species of gastropods, such as Haliotis spp., Strombus spp., Busycon spp. and Concholepas concholepas, have high economic value in international markets and play important social roles in small-scale artisanal fisheries. In the past 25 years wild-stock catches of marine gastropods have increased from 75,000 mt in 1979 to 103,000 mt in 1996. During the same period the countries involved in gastropod landings rose from 23 to 47. Gastropods are fished mainly in: (1) the American continent, dominated by the extraction of the muricid "loco", C. concholepas, in Chile and Peru; strombid conchs, Strombus spp., in the Caribbean, and abalone, Haliotis spp., in California and the west coast of the Baja California peninsula; (2) Asia and Oceania, with the dominate abalone fishery, mainly in Australia and New Zealand, and the horned turban snail, Turbo truncatus, in Japan and Korea; (3) in Africa and Europe, the dominate species extracted are Haliotis midae, heavily fished in South Africa, and the common periwinkle, Littorina littorea, and the whelk Buccinum undatum, which are extracted in Europe. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.