CCAMLR

Despite the continuous efforts of CCAMLR to fight Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing, there remains evidence of IUU activities in the Convention area. This paper is the executive summary of a recent, soon to be published report produced by TRAFFIC International in conjunction with WWF Australia that presents a trade-based assessment of toothfish catch for the period of 2003-2007 with a view to provide an indication of the extent of the IUU catch. The report highlights that in the period 2004 to 2007 the percentage of trade represented by IUU catch is estimated to average 17%, compared to CCAMLR’s average estimate of 10% of total landings. This suggests that CCAMLR may be underestimating IUU catch by more than 50% annually. This analysis reinforces the need for ongoing vigilance by CCAMLR to address IUU fishing, to use all available sources of information to maximise the accuracy of estimates of IUU catch and to continue to improve the current MCS measures in order to minimise opportunities for IUU toothfish to find a market. The report also provides a series of recommendation that the commission may wish to consider.

The use of trade-related measures, including catch and/or trade documentation schemes and the imposition of trade sanctions on vessels or Flag States failing to comply with the conservation and management measures of RFBs, has increased noticeably over the last decade. Experience has shown that trade-related measures have a role to play in improving catch estimates and addressing IUU fishing. There is even some evidence that trade sanctions have provided incentives for some countries to join RFBs and/or to co-operate in the implementation of the conservation and management measures of RFBs. In recent years UNGA resolutions on sustainable fisheries urged “States, individually and through regional fisheries management organizations and arrangements, to adopt and implement internationally agreed market-related measures in accordance with international law, including principles rights and obligations established in the WTO agreements, as called for in the IPOA-IUU.” CCAMLR has already introduced a series of trade related measures to combat IUU such as CDS, however there remains evidence that IUU activities continue in the Convention area and undermine the efforts of the Commission for the Conservation of the Antarctic Marine Living Resources. Thus trade and market measures remain an important element that the commission has still not used and through which CCAMLR and its members can seek to promote the Convention’s conservation objectives.

The issue of bioprospecting has been a constant item on the agenda of ATCM since 2003. Last June, ATCM XXXI discussed the report from an Intersessional Contact Group (ICG) that was established to examine the issue of Biological Prospecting in the Antarctic Treaty Area. Although increasingly used in International legal and policy frameworks addressing genetic resources, the term bioprospecting is not defined in any international convention or agreement. Indeed, there remains a range of views in the literature and in policy circles as to what bioprospecting involves. Definitions differ largely on how far ‘bioprospecting’ extends down the commercialisation path, and whether it includes the development process of the biocompound through to full scale commercialization and marketing. This makes it difficult to generalize any legal implications of “bioprospecting” and even harder to draw implications of this activity on resource management. Much of the debate to date in relation to marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdiction has centred on evidence of emerging commercial interest in the genetic resources of the deep sea. The private sector involvement in research related to marine resources may have delayed the publication of research results, which would explain the lack of publicly available information on genetic resources from the deep sea and in particular from Southern Ocean. This also raises the question of the public availability of data in the framework of the Antarctic Treaty which promotes free scientific information exchange. The paper provides a summary of information on research and commercialised products arising from biological samples that were sourced from the Antarctic region provided by the Antarctic Biological Prospecting Database. 56% of the records in the database originate from the marine environment of the Southern Ocean. Krill make up 60% of the marine records, while fish and other vertebrates come in second at 10%. Of those records, the majority relate to fish, with one record relating to the King Penguin. The rest of the records include marine algae (10%), sponges and tunicates (7%), and bacteria (6%). Finally the paper discusses some the evolving aspects of the regulations of bioprospecting of marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdiction and the relevance of some CCAMLR provisions, in particular the Convention’s reporting requirements outlined in Article 20 and monitoring requirement pursuant to Article 2.

Because of the unique context of the Southern Ocean, and the potential impact of Global Change on its ecosystems, Antarctic marine biodiversity information has to be widely published, immediately accessible, and carefully checked. To answer this need, the SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN) manages since 2005 a dedicated data portal, www.scarmarbin.be, which provides free and open access to this information. The two main achievements of SCAR-MarBIN are the development of a central Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS: 13,000 taxa) and of a distributed network of databases, which aggregates the information on the web portal (90 datasets; 1,000,000 records). SCAR-MarBIN is designed to act as a long-term repository, safeguarding the legacy of the IPY collaborative efforts, and to spread this knowledge within and beyond the present and future Antarctic communities. Almost entirely funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), SCAR-MarBIN is presently seeking to broaden its support basis. It plans to do so by establishing a consortium of partners willing to provide funding (financial or in-kind), on an equitable basis, to sustain and further the services SCAR-MarBIN presently offers.

In the Southern Ocean fisheries are increasingly being exploited while the effects of fishing are becoming obscured more and more by climate factors that in themselves are changing marine populations and communities, thus confounding management. It is timely for CCAMLR to develop a network of MPAs, with initial inclusion of the well-researched Ross Sea, the area of the Southern Ocean having relatively little human interference so far. Under present climate change scenarios, it could be among the last stretches of the world’s oceans where sea ice remains an important part of the system. The Ross Sea, therefore, represents a refuge both for science, historical value, and a diverse, sea-ice associated biotic community inhabiting neritic waters.