In Chile, due to the social and economic importance of artisanal benthic shellfisheries, there has been a strong political desire to achieve sustainable exploitation in these fisheries. The 1991 Chilean Fishery and Aquaculture Law that regulated access to benthic and pelagic coastal resources by the artisanal fisher sub-sector incorporated new regulations that affect their user rights through three management steps: (a) Exclusive fishery access rights within a zone that extends to 5 nautical miles from the shoreline along around 2 500 km of coast are assigned to artisanal fishers; (b) artisanal fishers are restricted to working (diving, finfishery) within the coastal region adjacent to their area of residence (regionalization); and (c), the allocation of exclusive harvesting rights for benthic resources to legally registered artisanal small-scale fishing associations, under what was defined as Management and Exploitation Areas for Benthic Resources (MEABRs). Through this policy, the Undersecretary of Fisheries allocates territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFS) to artisanal registered associations. This includes the right to exclude non-members of fisher associations from exploiting the seabed area of MEABRs. The rationale behind TURFS is based on a common property approach which proposes that property rights will create institutional arrangements among fishers, who will then manage, collectively harvest and sustain the resources. In this document, the authors highlight the importance of the gastropod Concholepas concholepas (loco), the cornerstone species that drove legislation on MEABRs as well as the role of this policy to achieve wider fishery objectives and generate incentives and conditions for self-governance.