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Instituto del Mar del Perú (IMARPE)
Since its creation in 1964, the mission of IMARPE has been to study the marine environment and biodiversity, to assess the fishery resources, and to give information and advice for management options on fisheries, aquaculture and the protection of the marine environment. As one of its major tasks, IMARPE develops applied research about the impacts of ENSO on the marine resources. The research staff of IMARPE comprises 335 people, including investigators and technicians. The headquarters of IMARPE is located in Callao (12ºS), but also seven regional laboratories are located along the Peruvian coast: Tumbes (03º30’S), Paita (05ºS), Santa Rosa (06º30’S), Chimbote (09ºS), Huacho (11ºS), Pisco (13º30’S) and Ilo (17ºS). IMARPE counts with a small fleet of research vessels, as the RV Humboldt (75 m length), RV Olaya (41 m length) and RV SNP-2 (21.5 m length), all of them dedicated to assessment of oceanographic resources and surveys.
The research division of IMARPE is organized as Research Directions, which include Pelagic and Demersal Resources, Oceanography, Aquaculture/Coastal Management, and Fishing Technology. Among the main laboratories, Experimental Physiology, Taxonomy, Phytoplankton, Zooplankton, Benthos, Geology, Hydrochemistry, Physical Oceanography, Biometry, Trophic Ecology, Acoustics, should be mentioned. The scientific tasks are accomplished by means of inter-disciplinary research teams, in which the regional laboratories are playing an increasing role, especially in the cases of coastal oceanography and pollution, assessment of natural banks and aquaculture.
In relation to ENSO, the institution leads the group ENFEN (National Study of the El Niño Phenomenon) that supplies updated and projected climatic information to the government and the community. This group also includes other public institutions as the Meteorological Service, the Marine Direction of Navigation and Hydrography, and the Peruvian Institute of Geophysics. According to its own mission, IMARPE currently develops a series of activities related to the ENSO issue, covering oceanographic monitoring, modelling and prevision aspects, biodiversity, plankton ecology, benthic ecology and biogeochemistry, fish population dynamics, among others.
IMARPE has links with COI, SCOR, IRI, IAI and other international programmes and institutions of research on environmental variability and marine resources. It also leads Peruvian participation in the Peru/Chile project Integrated Management of the Humboldt Current Large Marine Ecosystem that will be submitted to the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). In the eighties, IMARPE has received cooperation from GTZ by the programme PROCOPA, whose first director was Prof. Dr. W.E. Arntz (AWI); several investigators of IMARPE received training and specialization courses in Germany.
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