The largest enterprise type by production as well as by revenue comes from production of fishmeal and fish oil, which predominantly LY2109761 is based on processing of anchoveta. The revenue for these enterprises was estimated to US$ 1.7B, or 21% of the total revenue in the fisheries sector (Table 1). Yet, when comparing to local markets and fish restaurants, the revenue from these enterprise types combined exceeds the value from fishmeal and fish oil production, indicating the importance of the part of the sector that caters to seafood consumption. The flow charts in this study each present, in one clear depiction, a very rare overview of the revenue and employment

in an entire fisheries sector of a country. The revenue plot (Fig. 1) shows how the fishmeal plants are the biggest single enterprise type in the sector but also highlights Selleckchem GSK-J4 the importance of the fish restaurants and the local markets. This is even more pronounced when examining the employment

patterns in the sector where the fish restaurants are the dominant employer type followed by freezing and canning plants (Fig. 2). The flow charts have enterprise types arranged after ‘trophic levels’ (TLs) on the vertical axis. Producers (fishing fleets) are placed at TL 1, and enterprises that receive all their products directly from producers (e.g., fishmeal plants) will be placed at TL 2, and so on. Higher TLs thus indicates that the seafood products have passed through more steps, each of which will contribute to the economy until and employment. At the top of the ‘food web’ on

these figures were frozen wholesalers, a niche market with rather low production and employment, but with long ‘processing chains’. A typical processing chain for frozen seafood is, as an example, producer – frozen fish middlemen – freezing plant – domestic distributor of frozen seafood – frozen wholesalers – local markets – consumers. Such long chains increase revenue and employment. Following seafood through the process chain from producers to consumers, the revenue, cost, and employment was estimated by enterprise categories, and based on this the contribution to GDP was calculated. The primary sector and processing were found to provide the biggest contribution to the overall economy with 36% and 34% of the total, respectively (Table 2). Retailers followed at a close third with 26% though, indicating especially the importance of the restaurant business. The total contribution of the marine fisheries sector to the Peruvian economy was estimated to be US$ 3.2B for 2009 (Table 2), and this should be a conservative estimate given that this study, as explained in the methodology section, did not include all parts of the sector in the analysis.