“No step forward” on protecting the Southern Ocean and regulating krill fisheries at CCAMLR annual meeting
by Francesco De Augustinis
The annual meeting of the international body responsible for conservation of the marine ecosystems in the Southern Ocean concluded on Friday with no progress on two contentious issues before it: the creation of new marine protected areas and the strengthening of regulations governing krill (Euphausia superba) fishing.
The 44th meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) was held in Hobart, Australia, Oct. 20-31.
“We’re extremely worried and extremely disappointed,” Maximiliano Bello, an ocean policy consultant who attended the meeting as an adviser for the U.K.-based NGO Blue Marine Foundation, told Mongabay minutes after the closure. “The ‘conservation’ word is fading out of the convention now and more and more we see this sort of proposals and push to continue increasing the impact in the fishing, particularly of krill,” Bello said.
The meeting “did not advance measures to improve the spatial distribution of krill catches or establish protection zones,” Javier Arata, executive officer of the industry body Association of Responsible Krill harvesting companies (ARK), told Mongabay in an email. According to Arata, ARK members will continue to avoid fishing in voluntary restricted zones it introduced in 2019, “safeguarding over 74,000 km² [more than 28,500 square miles] of key penguin foraging habitat.” He said he is hopeful that “2026 will be a year of meaningful advancement.”
This year’s annual meeting of CCAMLR’s 27 members — 26 countries plus the European Union — was particularly tense, due to a clash between two occasionally overlapping groups of countries. One group is working to establish new marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly one around the Antarctic Peninsula that Chile and Argentina first proposed in 2017. The other is more focused on supporting proposals to increase krill fishing as early as next year.
In addition to this debate, the commission “renewed dozens of conservation measures” and introduced a new measure to counter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that requires all fishing vessels tranship only with a vessel listed in a newly created CCAMLR Record of Carrier Vessels, according to a press release from the CCAMLR secretariat. The commission also signed a memorandum of understanding with Peru, “enhancing cooperation and the exchange of scientific information on Antarctic ecosystem research,” the release states.
No step forward
As many observers expected, delegates reached no consensus on the creation of new MPAs due to the vetoes of Russia and China. In line with its 2009 pledge to create “a comprehensive and representative network of marine protected areas,” CCAMLR has considered proposals to establish three large MPAs annually for years: one in the western Antarctic Peninsula and south of the Scotia Arc, one in East Antarctica and one in the Weddell Sea. But the proposals have failed to pass each time under CCAMLR’s consensus-based decision-making process.
“Although the meeting did not result in the designation of the Antarctic Peninsula MPA, we did see a growing number of member states support the proposal in a way that they have not in the past,” Nicholas Kirkham, officer at Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project, told Mongabay.
“Supported by members such as the European Union, New Zealand and others, Chile and Argentina led the charge and made it clear that the objective of the treaty is the conservation of marine living resources, and they held a firm line in the face of mounting interests to increase krill fishing activities,” Kirkham said.
The body did not approve a Norwegian proposal for a new “Krill Fishery Management Approach” that would increase the krill catch limit from the current 620,000 metric tons per year to nearly 1.2 million metric tons per year.
In 2025, krill fishing reached the fishery’s trigger level for the first time in history, closing down the harvest. Some observers say this was due to CCAMLR members’ failure in 2024 to renew Conservation Measure 51-07 (CM 51-07), which allocated catches across different areas. A proposal by the European Union and other members to introduce a similar measure to replace CM 51-07 also didn’t reach consensus at the recent meeting.
According to several sources, this means that in 2026 the fleet will likely once again reach the catch limit and concentrate its operations in a few areas, such as Bransfield and Gerlache Strait, where marine wildlife gather in large numbers to feed on krill.
“There’s direct overlap between where the fishery takes place and where there are … hundreds of thousands of penguins and whales and seals that are also feeding on that krill,” Claire Christian, executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a network of conservation groups, told Mongabay from Hobart.
The combination of a lack of will to reinstate previously agreed regulations governing the krill fishery and the new push to drastically increase the krill harvest suggests a change in direction at CCAMLR toward more permissive fishing.
The reasons for the ‘no’
The Chinese and Russian delegations did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment on their reasons for vetoing the MPA proposals.
“They feel that they are not being listened to,” Matts Johansen, CEO of the Norwegian krill fishing company Aker BioMarine, which captured nearly 64% of the Southern Ocean krill catch in 2023, told Mongabay, suggesting both countries have motivations related to krill fishing. According to Johansen, Aker has frequent discussions with Russian authorities and is “the only partner that has dialogue with China.” He said his company will continue working to both achieve progress on marine protected areas and increase catch limits.
Both China and Norway are expanding their krill fishing operations in the Southern Ocean. In 2025, China increased its catches and expanded its fleet from four to five super trawlers. Aker BioMarine also announced that a new vessel will begin operations in 2026.
According to a study published in February in the journal Frontiers in Ocean Sustainability, both countries are driving this growth through public policies and investments. “China heavily subsidizes its distant water fishery operations, while Norway provides support through close government-industry collaboration and financial partnerships,” the study states.
China and Norway are key players in fish farming, the industry that consumes most of the krill production. In 2024, Aker BioMarine announced several collaborations with Chinese companies to produce and market krill-related products, particularly in the aquaculture feed sector.
For its part, Russia has not fished krill in the Southern Ocean in the last two decades, but in 2024, one Russian krill trawler was licensed by CCAMLR, suggesting the country may be seeking access to krill in vetoing new MPAs.
Russia could also have an interest in fossil fuel extraction in Antarctica, after having reportedly identified vast oil reserves in the Weddell Sea in 2024. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also underpins the CCAMLR convention, prohibits this kind of exploitation in the Southern Ocean.
CCAMLR questioned
In light of CCAMLR’s deadlock, in particular on the regulation of fishing, several observers told Mongabay they are looking to other international agreements, such as the newly minted BBNJ Agreement (also known as the High Seas Treaty), which will take force in January, for the protection of the Southern Ocean’s marine ecosystems.
“It is clear that the efforts around BBNJ are already having an impact on the conversations in CCAMLR,” Kirkham of Pew said, “but it is important to remember that CCAMLR already exists and that we have a treaty that has a long history of advancing precautionary fisheries management measures as well as creating the largest marine protected area in the world in the Ross Sea.”
Some prominent voices are pushing for even tighter, not looser, regulations on krill fishing. Since the United Nations Ocean Conference, held in Nice, France, in June, the Antarctic Avengers, a group of scientists and public figures, including oceanographer Sylvia Earle, actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Blue Marine Foundation, have been calling for the closure of the Southern Ocean to krill fishing to protect wildlife, ecosystems and climate stability..
“The Southern Ocean is one of the last truly wild places left on Earth,” Earle said in a press release from the group in September. “If we act now, Antarctica and its wildlife can recover. We must protect it from exploitation before it’s too late.”
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