The Chilean salmon industry recently experienced a crisis due to an outbreak of the ISA virus. The article examines the crisis focusing on the role of science in the policy solutions proposed, to discuss the real capacity of neoliberal environmental governance mechanisms to solve environmental and economic crisis. The question guiding this research is, which was the role of science in environmental policy created for the salmon industry? The argument is that the crisis represents a reestructuring of the relationship between society and nature through the redefinition of property rights, control and access to natural resources, but in which, in spite of a neoliberal discourse of trust in experts and science as elements of decision making, scientific information had little relevance.