Fisheries Development Institute installs meteorological stations on Mocha Island.
April 25th, 2025
Between April 8 and 10, the specialized technical group from IFOP’s Department of Oceanography and Environment installed two meteorological stations on Mocha Island, 40 km off the coast of Tirúa, in the Biobío region. Oceanographers Andrés Varas and Adrián Bustamante, along with Navy Metrology Service specialist Sergeant Daniel de la Fuente, installed these automatic recorders on the east and west sides of the island to capture all the spatial and temporal variability of the local wind. The wind recorded on this island (https://giscc.ifop.cl/web/estacion/34/tiposensor/5) will help us understand the impact of ENSO events and climate change on local meteorological and oceanographic processes, which characterize and define the main spawning area for common sardine and anchovy in south-central Chile, as well as the annual and interannual disturbances forced by these large-scale processes.
Furthermore, these two new stations join and strengthen the Climate Change Monitoring System for Fisheries Resilience (S.A.P.O) (https://sapo.ifop.cl/), contributing new observations to improve the numerical models of the local ocean being developed by IFOP to contribute, from an environmental, ecological, and biological perspective, to the ecosystemic understanding of two of the country’s main fisheries resources.
The installation of these scientific meteorological stations will also have a social impact on the safety of the local community by providing real-time data on local meteorological conditions to the island’s airport and local pilots.
The installation of this type of recorder has been possible thanks to the committed collaboration between SERVIMET and IFOP within the framework of the cooperation agreement between the Institute and DIRECTEMAR, where both institutions share efforts to monitor the entire Chilean coast.
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