CCAMLR

A collaborative project between Australian industry, the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation has been established to investigate the interactions between demersal fishing gears targeting Dissostichus spp. with marine benthos in the Australian EEZ of the Southern Ocean. Key outcomes of this project will include: • Compact camera systems which will be able deployed by scientific observers in the Convention area to quantify habitats types where fishing occurs • Identification of types and likely extent of interactions between different demersal fishing gears (trawl, longline, trap) with benthic communities around Heard and McDonald Islands (Division 58.5.2), and longlines on the Antarctic continental shelf • An assessment of the vulnerability of benthic habitats to impact by demersal gears in the Sub-Antarctic and high latitudes of the Southern Ocean • Recommendations for practical mitigation strategies to minimise fishing impacts on benthic communities Compact cameras have already been built and trialled on trawl on longline gear, and the footage captured indicates there is great potential for such systems to capture data to quantify interactions between demersal gears and the benthos in CCAMRL fisheries.

At the CCAMLR Bioregionalisation Workshop, 13-17 August 2007, it was agreed that physical variables could be used to produce primary physical regionalisations of the Southern Ocean and that benthic and pelagic zones should be considered separately. This paper provides a description of the process and results of the primary benthic regionalisation completed at the Workshop and subsequent refinements to this regionalisation including the use of additional data which could not be incorporated at the Workshop. The process and results of evaluating the physical regionalisation with biological data are also described.

Publicly available bathymetry and geophysical data can be used to map geomorphic features of the Antarctic continental margin and adjoining ocean basins at scales of 1:1-5 million. The geomorphic features identified and their properties can be related to major habitat characteristics such as sea floor type (hard versus soft), ice keel scouring, sediment deposition or erosion and current regimes. Where more detailed data are available, shelf geomorphology provides a guide to the distribution of the shelf benthic communities recognised by a number of authors. For areas off the shelf, the relationships between physical environmental parameters and the benthic biota are more poorly known however geomorphic mapping provides insights into major processes that are likely to influence benthic habitats. The geomorphic mapping method presented here rapidly provides a layer to add to benthic bioregionalisation using readily available data and provides useful insights into seabed and oceanographic conditions that influence benthic communities, even in the absence direct measurements. The conclusion from this preliminary study of sea floor geomorphology from the Antarctic is that there is enough data to available already to produce a meaningful benthic bioregionalisation for an area as poorly known as the Antarctic continental margin and surrounding oceans. Studies of shelf biota that have tried to link the physical environment with benthic communities have found links strong enough to suggest that geomorphology is a useful first-pass tool for mapping the distribution of communities. The link between biology and geomorphology is the degree to which sea floor geometry influences oceanographic, biogeochemical and substrate processes to shape the conditions for benthic communities. Additional layers of bed shear stress and sediment characteristics will further refine benthic bioregionalisation when data become available however the results produced by mapping from bathymetry alone are sufficient to justify its use in the first stage of benthic bioregionalisation for CCAMLR waters

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is one of the largest marine resources of animal origin protein on the planet. Krill is the key element of the Antarctic Region ecosystem. Construction of modern vessels for krill fisheries and processing is foreseen anyway; introduction of new technologies on krill catch and resulting products, such as krill oil, hidrolizates, astaxanthine-related antioxidants and other preparations. Became possible due to the construction of specialized large-capacity fish-krill super trawlers.

Presented research on feeding and the dietary structure by species of minke whales, conducted on board the whaling fleet Sovietskaya Ukraina during the 1982/83 - 1985/86 seasons. Whaling was conducted in all four seasons. There have been no noticeable increase of the population size of large whales over the years after the cessation of whaling. The role of a short and profitable from the energy point of view trophic chain «phytoplankton - krill - baleen whales», which is of main interest due to the potential meaning of its last link for the commercial exploitation, reduced significantly.