“I am cheated by the illegal fishers. They are pushing the price of fish down. With more fish in the market, they are underselling me and making more money. So what do you do?” Bustos asks rhetorically.

“I’m a dignified man,” he says. “I don’t want to live off of handouts. I want to work and earn my money. But our kids don’t want to be fishermen anymore.”

That leaves the future uncertain in places like Bustos’ town of Cocholgüe, home to roughly 2,000 fishermen and their families. Seafood is the country’s third-largest export, but after decades of mismanagement, over two-thirds of Chile’s commercial fish stocks are over-exploited or collapsed, says Mauricio Galvez, who coordinated WWF-Chile’s Fisheries Programme. “It is not only an environmental or economic issue. There are thousands of vulnerable people who directly depend on such stocks.”

To bring in a little more income, some people have started collecting and selling seaweed for make-up and creams. “This used to be an activity just for poor people, but this has changed,” says Bustos. “Two years ago, you would get 100 pesos per kilo. Now we make 600 pesos. We can make good money.”

What’s happening in Cocholgüe is playing out in coastal communities around the world. Over 85 per cent of marine fish stocks are considered either fully exploited or over-fished, and more than one in five fisheries has collapsed.