CCAMLR

The Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea regional ecosystem and potentially management of the krill fishery are both experiencing rapid change. This includes warming, growth in krill catches, and increasingly concentrated fishing effort, all of which impact penguins and other predators. Further, the krill fishery is expanding into areas of East Antarctica unfished since the 1990s. Here ASOC identifies current priorities and future actions of importance for maintaining a healthy ecosystem in the context of the Antarctic krill fishery. ASOC recommends that:

• CCAMLR should be prepared to adopt an improved krill fishery management measure next year that strengthens protection for krill predators since Conservation Measure (CM) 51-07 will expire at the end of the 2020/21 fishing season. To provide the Commission with advice needed for the revision of CM 51-07, ASOC recommends that SC-CAMLR prioritize completion prior to the end of Working Group meetings in 2021 of all three priority elements of the 2019 krill management work plan – the biomass estimate, stock assessment, and in particular the risk assessment.

• CCAMLR should implement a revised management system by 2022-2023 that also includes regular krill surveys including in nearshore areas; reevaluation of stock and risk assessment models; a comprehensive revision of the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Plan (CEMP); explicit measures to increase resilience to climate change; and increased industry contributions to the scientific costs of an ecosystem-based management system.

• SC-CAMLR should develop catch and bycatch reporting methods to mitigate ecosystem impacts, including methods to accurately report catch despite differences in greenweight estimation techniques between vessels; and develop methods to evaluate and monitor fish and seabird bycatch in continuous mid-water trawl method, advising on mitigation measures.

All over the world, transhipment operations have been repeatedly identified as activities of concern to fisheries regulators due to their potential to help facilitate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Moreover, CCAMLR’s Second Performance Review has recommended that CCAMLR improve its regulation of transhipment activities, but CCAMLR has failed to agree on new measures. CCAMLR has now fallen behind regional fisheries bodies, many of whom have adopted much stricter rules. ASOC therefore recommends that CCAMLR take action with respect to the following aspects of transhipment: • Reporting: CCAMLR should adopt a standardized reporting form and require reporting of all transhipment events. • Authorized vessels: CCAMLR should maintain a public list of authorized vessels that includes the vessel name, flag, type, registration number, authorizations period, and IMO number. • Monitoring: The Commission should mandate that all authorized carrier vessels carry a VMS transmitting simultaneously to both the flag State and Secretariat. • Chain of custody: The e-CDS should be amended to include the recording and tracing of all transhipped catches. • Declaration forms: CCAMLR should require use of a standardized transhipment declaration form. • Observer coverage: CCAMLR should explicitly require 100 percent observer coverage for all vessels involved in transhipments. • Transparency: CCAMLR should request the Secretariat to provide a detailed public annual summary report of all in-port and at-sea transhipment operations involving the transfer of catches from the Convention Area.

2020 has been an extremely unusual year due to the coronavirus pandemic. ASOC recognizes that this has required changes to the normal operation of CCAMLR and resulted in a limited number of items being included in the 2020 meeting agenda. However, the conservation issues that CCAMLR addresses have not been paused, and it remains urgent to address them. In this report, ASOC highlights some additional topics of relevance to CCAMLR and relevant work by ASOC and its members. ASOC recommends that CCAMLR continue to undertake work related to:

• Protecting cetaceans in the CCAMLR Area

• Increasing transparency and access to technical information

• Extending the IMO’s Polar Code to polar fishing vessels

• Addressing marine plastic pollution

Information is presented on a Workshop for Training Russian Scientific Observers and Inspectors to work in fisheries in the CAMLR Convention Area held at the AtlantNIRO Institute in Kaliningrad (17-21 August 2020).

This paper represents the annual report of the multi-member longline survey on Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) at Division 58.4.4b in the 2019/20 fishing season by Japan and France. The C2 and Observer data sets were provided by the CCAMLR Secretariat on July the 14th, 2020. In this paper, the data set during current fishing season (2019/20) was used for reporting the quantity of data and samples collected. The research operations at Division 58.4.4b have not yet been completed in the 2019/20 fishing season.

In order to achieve the milestone “1.5 Update CASAL model” (SC-CAMLR-37 Report, Annex12), the CASAL models for Dissostichus eleginoides at Division 58.4.4b were revised.

We updated CASAL model with latest data up to 2018/19 fishing season. In this report, there are no change in model assumptions and scenarios from the previous model (WG-FSA-2019/62) except for removing M3 (without spowning season in CPUE standardization). We estimated the harvest rate (CAY and MAY) as defined in CASAL manual using each CASAL runs.

A single-sex age structured CASAL model was built to assess the stock of constructed for D. eleginoides of the research block 1 of Division 58.4.4b. We updated data weighting values with latest data. Similar to the CASAL results reported in WG-FSA-2019/62, the MPD profile look good under all scenarios. It is noted that he MPD estimate values of B0 (ranging 854-940 tonnes) are larger than WG-FSA-2019/62 (ranging 621-683 tonnes).

Putting aside the first recorded CPUE of the time series (2007/2008) decreases the estimate of B0 (M2 compared to M1) and accounting for a higher IUU level increased the B0 estimate (M4 compared to M1). Overall, the B0 estimates in this paper are higher than estimated in 2019.

In all scenarios, estimated MCYs for D. eleginoides are higher than current catch limit 23 tonnes in block 1 at Division 58.4.4b. Harvest rates to achieve CCAMLR management target (50% B0), FCAY, were estimated as 7%, which is higher than current precautionary harvest rate for explanatory fisheries where there is no estimate of B0.

This paper represents the annual report of a multi-member longline survey on Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) at Subarea 48.6 in the 2019/20 fishing season by Japan, Spain, and South Africa. The data set, C2 and Observer data, was provided by the CCAMLR Secretariat on the 14th July, 2020. In this paper, the data set during current fishing season (2019/20) was used for reporting the quantity of data and samples collected. The research operations at 48.6 have not yet been completed in the 2019/20 fishing season.

This paper updates the knowledge of egg and larval transport of Dissostichus mawsoni in the East Antarctic region as a background document of the research plan for the multi-Member research on the Dissostichus mawsoni exploratory fishery in East Antarctica (Divisions 58.4.1 and 58.4.2) from 2018/2019 to 2021/2022. Using particle tracking technique, this experiment assessed successful transport pathways and percentage of egg and larvae released from the Banzare Bank and continental slopes to identify which recruitment scenario hypothesized by the CCAMLR scientific report appears to be in action in the East Antarctic region. The result of this paper suggested that the majority of successful transport was supplied from continental slopes. Although the southeast part of the BB was the source of the successful transports, the level of successful transports was overall low. Thus, the 3rd scenario of originally hypostasized three scenarios seemed to work in the East Antarctic region. The local recirculation played an essential role to cause successful transport from continental slopes to continental shelves. In addition to this, the position of the southern branch of the ACC against sources on continental slopes was also vital to determine successful egg and larval transports.