exploring oceans CASE STUDY- KRILL

Use and management of this source

• Primary consumer in the food web. Food source for whales, seals, dolphins, fish, birds, squid.

• Health supplements e.g. omega 3 oil

• Food for fish farms

• Bait for sport fisherman

• Pet food

• Help to sequester carbon by eating carbon rich phytoplankton near the surface and excreting it when they sink to lower, colder water to escape predators

• Small amount used for human consumption (tails, paste)

Management of Krill

 

• Commercial harvesting of krill began in the early 1970s and has become a significant industry in the Southern Ocean

• Krill have been victims of boom and bust fishing (when the population surges rapidly due to favourable environmental conditions and then crashes sharply as the species cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up with catch rate as this species then becomes over exploited)

• Boom and bust fishing- stocks finished to near extinction as the population crashes due to large scale exploitation. Populations may recover, only to be overfished to near extinction again.

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Values, attitudes, socioeconomic status and political context of the stakeholders influence the use and management of the resource

Stakeholders:

• countries catching krill (governments and fishing communities)

• Consumers (health food companies, fish farms, sport fishing)

• International organisations/committees- CCAMLR (Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) implemented under the remit of the Antarctic Treaty System (and dominated by ACs)

• Environmentalists/scientists

• Fishing industry

 

Influence of stakeholders:

• 5 countries currently harvesting krill

• Norway- accounts for just over half of annual catch

• China- around 18% of annual catch

• South Korea- around 18% of annual catch

• Chile

• Ukraine

 

CCAMLR

• Set up in 1982

• International body responsible for the conservation of southern ocean marine life and ecosystems.

• Made up of 26 member states made up of ACs and EDCs and the European Union, which meet each year to make decisions on issues such as the closure and opening of fisheries in Antarctica, total allowable catches (TACs) and the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs)

• One of CCAMLR’s aims is to monitor and regulate commercial interests in krill

• Adopts holistic approach looking at not just exploited species, but ecosystem as a whole

• Trying to establish catch limits

• Fishing only permitted if the scientific committee is reasonably sure that the harvest is sustainable and the ecosystem wont be harmed

• Stakeholders in CCAMLR are dominated by ACs. Some are active in fishing for krill, like Norway, but the majority don’t have boats in the Southern Ocean but do have long term scientific interest in the arctic, such as Australia and the UK. China’s significant role in the krill industry is a reflection of its developing maritime power but also the need to feed its large population.

• Member countries of CCAMLR are pursuing a broadly sustainable approach to krill farming

Effective?

• CCAMLR is seen to be highly effective at a global scale, setting catch limits and closing fisheries, ecosystem based tracking.

• Every major decision requires a 100% unanimous vote. This can have positive and negative effects.

• However, total catch is capped at 1% (the 620,000 tonne limit). This means that fishing vessels don’t distribute themselves evenly. Therefore industrial super-trawlers can now concentrate operations entirely within core foraging grounds. This creates direct food competition for land based predators like penguins during nesting seasons as local waters are stripped of krill so penguins must dive deeper, swim further to catch krill and end up catching less or it takes them much longer, this impacts penguin chicks and the penguins themselves.

• Furthermore, compliance is voluntary. It is up to individual countries to police and punish their own vessels if they break the rules

 

Conflict with stakeholders

• China needs to feed large population, wants to develop maritime power

• Debate between environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and companies that gain profit from harvesting of krill is often heated. With more and more efficient technologies such as suction fishing, and the limited policing of agreements and quotas in such vast areas of ocean, there is some scepticism about the commitments to conservation. Greenpeace is one of the many enviornmental groups campaigning for the Antarctic region to become an enormous marine reserve of nearly 2million km2 in which all fishing would be banned. In 2018, 5 of the largest companies making up the Association of Responsible Krill Harvesting (ARK) from Norway, Chile, South Korea, China signed an agreement to stop fishing in sensitive coastal parts of the frozen continent. The total area where the ban will apply will reportedly constitute the worlds biggest ocean sanctuary

 

 

 

Resilience of the resource and key threasholds to initiate management

• Krill shoals can be measured using sonar surveys

• Current total allowable catch (TAC) threshold for krill is set at 620,000 tonnes per year. This would maintain enough krill for a healthy breeding population. Calculation based on mathematical modelling. This limit is concentrated in one major region of the southern ocean- area 48.

• This 620,000 tonne trigger limit was reached early in 2024 and 2026 meaning CCAMLR had to immediately close the fishery for the remainder of those seasons.

• TAC threshold is well below catch limit for the whole area around Antarctica of around 5.6mil tonnes

• Most krill fishing is concentrated around sheltered islands in Antarctic and around the Antarctic peninsula. This is a key breeding area for krill

• Long term resilience is sensitive to external factors including spatial concentration, sea ice dependency.

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