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In May 2016, residents of Chiloé in southern Chile blockaded their island to protest the contamination of their fishery by aquaculture operators as well as the state’s failure to adequately regulate this new industry. Media coverage of events on the island, particularly the scarcity of food resulting from the blockade, constituted a discourse of images that invoked the mobilization of “respectable” women during other moments of political crisis—specifically the bread shortages during the Popular Unity government (1970–1973) and the widespread human rights abuses of the Pinochet Dictatorship (1973–1990). These images helped protestors transform an environmental crisis into a humanitarian catastrophe, mobilizing collective memory of suffering and gaining widespread support for their cause. This article argues that media coverage of the protest and subsequent support for the protestors in other parts of Chile strengthened the hand of those whose livelihoods had been affected by the crisis and led to greater compensation for fishing families.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has inspired novel strategies for keeping worksites operational and workers safe, with varying degrees of success. In southern Chile, where more than a third of the world’s farmed salmon is produced, the industrial aquaculture sector has been largely successful at avoiding major disruptions and financial losses by mobilizing strategies developed during previous sanitary crises that threatened the health of fish and the industry itself. Here, I engage with the literature on crises and disasters to evaluate these strategies as well as their unintended consequences. I contend that many of the strategies developed to address COVID‐19 as a sanitary crisis and prevent the spread of the virus have deepened the divisions between aquaculture firms and the remote coastal communities where they operate. These social and economic divisions have the potential to undermine the industry’s long‐term viability.

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