CCAMLR

Notification of Ukraine’s intent to conduct krill fishing in 2012/13

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is widely recognised as a leading international organisation in developing best-practice in the ecosystem approach to managing fisheries.  CCAMLR provides a useful case study for examining the impediments to implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) because it has EBFM principles embedded within its convention rather than having to make a transition from single-species management to an ecosystem approach.  CCAMLR is demonstrating that EBFM does not need to equate to complexity in management and that methods can be developed to decide on spatial management strategies for fisheries so that predators of target species are not disproportionately affected as a result of spatial and/or temporal dependencies of predators on their prey.  Science has an important role in implementing EBFM, not only in measuring and assessing the status of target species and their predators, but also in designing cost-effective management strategies and in resolving disputes.  Importantly, attention needs to be given to developing the capability and tools to overcome differences amongst scientists in providing advice to managers.  The CCAMLR experience suggests that voluntary participation by fishing States in CCAMLR and its consensus environment without adequate safeguards do not provide strong foundations for achieving, in the long term, the ecosystem-based principles for managing fisheries when there is any degree of scientific uncertainty.  Some solutions to these issues are discussed.  Overall, broader-than-CCAMLR solutions amongst the international community as well as the continued commitment of CCAMLR Members will be required to resolve these issues.

The first Workshop for developing MPAs in the Domain 1 was held at Valparaiso, Chile, between 28 May and 1 June. At the workshop assisted delegates from 6 countries plus a number of NGOs and representatives from the fishing industry.

Main outcomes of the Workshop were: an agreement on sharing data layers for conducting the analysis; a concerted list of conservation objectives to be included in the analyses; a review of existing and missing data; a definition of the cost-layer to be included; a recommendation on the analysis and software to be used for aiding to identify priority areas for conservation. Examples of already defined conservation objects and data layers are presented.

During the discussions it was realized that some conservation objectives had a direct relationship with the feedback management strategy. Accordingly, these issues were derived to the WG-EMM for discussion.

Finally, the group decided on the coming steps for keep developing on the MPA.

Managing fisheries to achieve ecosystem objectives is in its infancy. A general approach for maintaining ecological relationships and providing for the recovery of depleted populations in food webs supporting fisheries is proposed. This paper addresses the following general questions for taking the ecosystem approach in managing fisheries: (i) how might fisheries impact incidentally on an ecosystem, (ii) what should be the conservation objectives for predators of fished species, and (iii) what approaches could be considered for achieving the conservation objectives?  The approach proposed here takes account of uncertainties in knowledge of the structure of ecosystems.  Estimates of production arising from fished species (encapsulated in proposed indices P and W) potentially provide useful indicators for management purposes because they integrate across a range of “ecosystem” effects and, as formulated here, can also be related directly to the effects of fishing.  These features are currently unavailable in ecosystem approaches to managing fisheries.  The paper elaborates the steps required to establish management procedures based on these indices.

Harvesting of marine living resources in the Southern Ocean is managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).  CCAMLR is widely known for its ecosystem-approach to managing fisheries with the maintenance of ecological relationships included in the conservation objectives.  In the late 1980s, the precautionary approach of CCAMLR was developed, incorporating principles of how to use scientific evidence in the decision making process.  Even though this approach was based on the management of single species (Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba), it takes account of the needs of predators in the assessment of catch limits.  The success of this process is due to the formulation of a management procedure, which has decision rules that specify how harvest controls will be adjusted based on the scientific information available and the assessments that arise from such information.  To assist the Commission in meeting its objectives, the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Program (CEMP) was set up to detect the effects of fishing on krill predators.  CCAMLR needs to adopt a management procedure which has a great chance of maintaining ecological relationships and meeting the needs of predators, incorporating (i) operational objectives that articulate the target conditions of relevant aspects of the system, (ii) methods for assessing the status of the system, (iii) decision rules on how to adjust harvest controls given the difference between the assessment and the agreed objectives, and (iv) methods for dealing with uncertainty.  This paper reviews progress in developing ecosystem-based management procedures by summarising the gaps in the existing approach, the types of models developed for the Antarctic marine ecosystem, the implications of the large-scale of the fishery for designing a monitoring program to detect the effects of fishing, and the types of procedures already proposed for managing the krill fishery.  It highlights the need to focus the future work in these three areas, including the need to evaluate candidate management procedures in advance of the expansion of the krill fishery.  Most importantly, operational objectives for dependent species and feasible management options need to be clearly articulated to guide this work.

Commercial krill fishing vessels can provide useful data for science and management. The use of such vessels as platforms for survey transects under scientific supervision has already been demonstrated. Here we show that acoustic data of good quality can be collected by observers on board during normal fishing operations in a relatively easy and cheap manner using the Norwegian vessel ‘Saga Sea’ in 2011 as example. A one-month subset of the acoustic data from February/March was processed within a time-frame of a week and linked to krill length data from the same period. The data from the fishing operations were very different from transect data collected just some days before. Krill concentrations were in general much higher during fishing and the length distribution was different. This was expected from the very concentrated geographical positioning of the vessel and intensive fishing during the period. The data have the potential of providing information about local krill depletion, fishing patterns and diel and seasonal behavior of krill. Based on the last years experience with the Norwegian krill fishing vessels and previous experience in own waters we advocate that increased collaboration with commercial vessels should be aimed at.

During the 2011 season, 22 scientific observation programs were conducted by 9 national and 13 internationally designated scientific observers on board krill vessels operating in the Convention Area.  For the 2012 season, 11 observer programs have been reported, with data available for 2 of these used in this report.

This document outlines a proposal from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to provide a Geographical Information System (GIS) for CCAMLR.  The proposal offers a web-based GIS that will provide state-of-the-art capacity for managing spatial data for CCAMLR, particularly the types of information managed by WG-EMM. It also proposes joint working with the Secretariat to enable capacity building in handling geographic information, and a phased handover of system development and maintenance to the Secretariat.

BAS is well-placed to offer these geographic information services, with over 10 years of experience in developing award-winning web-based GIS and spatial data access systems.

The proposal offers a staged approach involving different levels of complexity and commitment. At this stage the document only includes indicative costs but can be followed up with a more detailed, fully-costed proposal.

An analysis of the observer data provided from the krill fishery was undertaken using a range of  complementary methods of data quality control and variance investigation. A sample pooling approach analysis on the other hand revealed the distribution of variance in krill length at different scales and indicated that krill hauled in a given month/season/area were similar enough to be pooled to compute monthly length frequency distributions. Linear Mixed Models were used to remove systematic variability in  krill length due to seasons, months and areas and this allowed estimates of variance components associated with different vessels and observers to be obtained; these were found to be statistically significant and a made a substantial contribution to the overall random variation. Recommendations for future sampling scheme, including the  potential for an adaptive responding to the variability in krill population structure are both provided and invited.

Brazil has been requested to coordinate the implementation of the review of the Management Plan for the Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) No. 1, Admiralty Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Archipelago (herein called the Area). The objective of this paper is to inform CCAMLR about the process for the revision and to ask for input into that process following the procedures described in ATCM Decision 9 (2005).