This is the 19th volume of CCAMLR Science and the contents reflect the important science that supports CCAMLR’s management of the marine living resources of the Southern Ocean. In this issue the first three papers deal with aspects of the role of science in the development and management of individual fisheries and also in understanding the potential broader impacts of fishing through improved estimation of the total removals and by-catch.

The remaining six papers are a suite of papers that arose from the recommendations of a Joint CCAMLR-IWC Workshop to Review Input Data for Antarctic Marine Ecosystem Models that was held at the CCAMLR Headquarters in Hobart, Australia, from 11 to 15 August 2008. The aim of this suite of papers is to provide an information and data repository for key components of the Southern Ocean ecosystem. These papers provide an important synthesis and update the information available, including from previously grey/unpublished literature on ice-breeding seals, distribution and diet of penguins, consumption of krill by fish, zooplankton, krill and phytoplankton. They provide scientists developing models of the Antarctic marine ecosystem with an important overview of the types, relative importance, and uncertainties associated with input data for those models, including models for providing management and conservation advice relevant to CCAMLR and IWC.

There is no doubt that using ecosystem models of the Southern Ocean to provide management advice is an important, complex and incredibly challenging process. Hopefully the papers published in this volume will facilitate a greater understanding of the data inputs into such models and help to foster an increased willingness to use those models to make science-led management decisions.

I am particularly grateful to Dr Andrew Constable from the Australian Antarctic Division, who was not only a Co-convener of the Joint CCAMLR-IWC Workshop to Review Input Data for Antarctic Marine Ecosystem Models but also took on the onerous role of Guest Editor for those papers that are included in this volume of CCAMLR Science.

Keith Reid
Editor