PUERTO NATALES, Chile — Out beyond Isla Focus, a bare island in the fjords an hour off the coast of Puerto Natales, southern Chile, the waves pick up and the Calipso rocks alarmingly from side to side.

Reinaldo Caro is the swarthy captain of the tiny fishing vessel, and he has spotted something amid the pristine Patagonian woodland high above the shoreline: a single, white-bark tree.

"There!" he exclaims suddenly, his thick eyebrows lifting as his face softens into a broad smile. "That's where I was born."

"And then that's what I'm fighting against," he says, tracing a path down the hillside with a finger, fixing it on a pontoon floating directly below his birthplace.

It belongs to one of the many salmon farms that dot the fjords, although from the surface, there isn't much to see. A

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