Before setting sail for the South Pacific, Chilean fisherman Rodrigo Gallardo blesses himself to invoke heavenly protection and luck in his pursuit of an increasingly elusive catch: hake.

Strong winds make for a choppy seven-nautical-mile (13 kilometer) voyage from the port of Valparaiso to deep waters that decades ago were teeming with Chile’s favorite fish.

But several hours later, when Gallardo reels in a longline studded with sardines (these small fry are used as bait) just a single hake has bitten.

“In the past, the hold was completely full,” the 46-year-old lamented.

The South Pacific hake, or merluccius gayi, provides a living for some 4,000 small-scale fishermen in Chile, a country with over 6,000 kilometers of coastline, which has a voracious appetite for “merluza.”

But the a

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