The "picoroco", Austromegabalanus psittacus (Molina), is a sessile crustacean distributed along the length of the Chilean coastline, including the Juan Fernandez Islands, southern Peru and the south of Argentina. It is one of the largest specimens of the cirripede group ("giant barnacle").
 |
The picoroco is part of Chile´s cultural identity. The Chilean postal office, in 1991, released an official stamp with a picoroco on it. |
|
Picoroco is a traditional Chilean dish and has been extracted on a small scale by local fishermen since the beginning of the XX century. Nevertheless, due to its high-quality meat it has aroused interest on the external market. Contrary to other species of crustaceans with delicate meat, it is not mobile and is neither carnivorous nor territorial. It possesses special attributes that favor culture in suspended systems, such as: seed can be obtained from the environment; rapid growth; gregarious recruitment and growth; natural filter feeding. In view of this, culture activities on an industrial scale are currently being undertaken in the south of Chile.
The "picoroco" not only has considerable commercial potential, it has also been used as a model for both physiological and ecological studies, due to the size of its muscular fibers and the presence of structural modifications resulting from growth in groups, respectively.
