The winter squid fishing season around the Malvina Islands has just closed with figures that, far from being mere statistics, sound an alarm bell for the Argentine marine ecosystem.

According to data provided by the fishing sector with interests in the occupied archipelago, the fleet, mostly Spanish-owned, operating under the questionable license of the British government, barely managed to catch 18,000 tons of Patagonian squid .

This figure, part of an extension of the season granted by the colonial authorities to alleviate shipowner complaints, confirms a catastrophic trend: it is the third consecutive year of a winter with minimal volumes, painting a picture of imminent collapse.

The devastating results of 2025 cannot be understood without contrasting them with the relentless fishing of previous years. In 2019, for example, contemporary reports reported a haul of 85,000 tons from the same fishing ground, with the Galician fleet breaking historic records and earning hundreds of millions of dollars. That year was hailed as the "best year since 1995."

In May of that year, Agenda Malvinas reported that the first harvest alone had surpassed 51,000 tons in less than three months, a volume then considered exceptional. The narrative was one of abundance and expansion into new markets such as China and South Africa.

Even at the beginning of 2024 , the first season (summer-fall) already pointed to fierce exploitation. A June report indicated that a fleet composed of 105 Spanish, Taiwanese, and South Korean vessels had taken a staggering 142,680 tons in just a few months . The 17 Spanish trawlers based in Vigo alone contributed 59,000 tons to that figure, on track to once again surpass the 100,000 tons per year that have been the standard for true plunder .

However, the bonanza appears to have come to an end . Biology imposes its limits in the face of unsustainable fishing pressure. In fact, the decision not to fish in the second season last year, although part of scientific studies aimed at restoring the fishing grounds, was actually a response to a "drastic decline in the presence of the species."

This year, the granting of an extended season and permission to fish "whatever you can" is nothing more than the desperate act of a system that prioritizes immediate economic returns over sustainability, even at the cost of exhausting every last unit of the resource .

The implications are extremely serious and multidimensional. Ecologically, a key species in the South Atlantic food chain is being brought to the brink of collapse . Economically, a renewable natural resource belonging to the Argentine people is being plundered with illegitimate licenses issued by an extracontinental occupier, depriving the country of billions of dollars in foreign currency and harming the national fishing fleet. Politically, a situation of usurpation and illegal extraction of resources is being consolidated, with an international permissiveness that Argentina has repeatedly denounced, with little or no result .

The cold data speaks volumes: from 85,000 tons in 2019 to 18,000 tons in 2025. The downward trend is alarming. This isn't just a single bad year, but the clear consequence of a predatory practice that has ignored all warning signs .

The Malvinas fishing grounds, once an inexhaustible resource, cry out for immediate protection, within the framework of Argentina's just claim to sovereignty, to ensure its preservation for future generations. Silence, in this case, is complicit in the plunder.