The Indian sector of the subantarctic region hosts large populations of top predators which are listed at various level of vulnerability by the IUCN and which are monitored by several bio-logging programs since the late 1980s. Here we analyze more than 800 individuals from seven different pelagic species of albatross, penguins and pinnipeds. Merging our analysis with previous results, we find that the trophic hotspots constitute a network connected by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) through a bottom up effect. When mapped on jurisdictions, this network of hotspots appears to be only partly protected in existing MPAs under national jurisdictions. This study suggests that some High seas areas need to be considered within the CCAMLR area but also the SIOFA.

Following the submission of a first draft Conservation Measure for establishing a MPA in the Weddell Sea (WSMPA) to CCAMLR 2016, Germany has carried out further work on the WSMPA proposal and will submit a revised CM proposal to CCAMLR 2018.

This document informs The Workshop on Spatial Management (WS-SM-2018) about the following revisions carried out to the WSMPA proposal which would fall under the remit of, or might be of interest to participants at the WS-SM 2018:

1. Unifying the previously two separate WSMPA parts into one coherent WSMPA by closing the gap on the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula;
2. Adjustment of the habitat of adult Antarctic toothfish in statistical areas 48.6 and 48.5 as a result of further analyses and modelling of the habitat of adult Antarctic toothfish;
3. Establishment of scientific reference areas in statistical subarea 48.6 for monitoring the effects of harvesting on Antarctic marine living resources and for achieving the WSMPA specific objectives.
4. Changes to the WSMPA Management Plan and the WSMPA Research and Monitoring Plan, inter alia, by taking into account the outcome of the CCAMLR Workshop for the Development of a D. mawsoni Population Hypothesis for Area 48.

The document also seeks the advice of WS-SM-2018 as regards the design of the fisheries research zone (FRZ) foreseen in the draft WSMPA Conservation Measure and the establishment (number, location and size) of unfished scientific reference areas in the habitat for adult Antarctic toothfish in statistical subarea 48.6 (see point 3 above), which could be used for comparative studies into the potential impacts of D. mawsoni fishing operations on the ecosystems and food webs, of which this species is a part.

This document is a short extraction from the article “Benthic ecoregionalisation and conservation issues in the French Exclusive Economic Zone of Kerguelen” submitted the 16/05/2018 to the journal CCAMLR Science for the proceedings of The Second Symposium on Kerguelen Plateau Marine Ecosystems and Fisheries (13–15 November 2017, Hobart, Tasmania). Full text, figures, results, discussion and references will be available in the original article. Original article includes full benthic ecoregionalisation modelling results and an assessment of the new marine reserve of the Kerguelen EEZ regarding to the benthic conservation issues. In this document, a methodological focus is made to highlight the relevance of using the CCAMLR’s Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems bioindicator taxa to build benthic ecoregionalisation models, which constitutes a secondary result of the original study.

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle presented at the 2017 EMM Working Group of the CCAMLR a new data acquisition protocol for benthos bycatch in the French fisheries of the Southern Ocean. This new framework has been used to set the field work during the Poker 4 fish biomass survey. The protocol is based on the sampling of specimens and the weighing and photographic sampling of the whole benthos bycatch. The Poker 4 survey permitted to improve significantly the Kerguelen’s benthos database developed by the MNHN, allowing to increase by 86.3 % the quantity of occurrences of organisms within the area. The knowledge about benthic habitats and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems will be strongly enhanced by the analysis of this new huge dataset. Furthermore, for the first time within the French EEZ, benthic cameras permitted to observe the substrates in this northern part of the Kerguelen Plateau. Upcoming results of the videos analysis and the use of modelling techniques with the related data will allow to establish a complete map of the substrates of the French EEZ.

In order to understand and mitigate for the potential impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on marine predators it is fundamental to gain insight into the drivers behind the temporal variation in their current distribution. With this in mind, we used Platform Terminal Transmitter (PTT) devices to track Adélie and chinstrap penguins breeding on the South Orkney Islands during the pre-moult phase of the annual cycle. We show that Adélie penguins have an affinity to forage and moult on sea-ice, and that chinstraps remain over the shallower shelf waters during pre-moult, and return to the colony to moult. However, habitat models aimed to predict the preferred foraging habitats of penguins during pre-moult had low predictive power. This indicates that predictive models may be insufficient to understand the distribution and foraging behaviour of penguins during certain stages of the life-cycle, and that collecting empirical data from individual colonies or archipelagos is vital if we are to understand the potential implications of future climate warming, or indeed with the overlap with potentially competing fisheries.

The present document is an update of document EMM-16/52, presenting refine analysis of the krill fishing hotspots and a description of the daily CPUE pattern for the krill fishery. This paper has now been accepted for publication in Fisheries Research.

Results identified several fishing hotspots (FHs), where the fleet took 48 to 57% of the seasonal catch, and are relatively persistent seasonality (2-6 months) with high catch densities (2.2-30.3 ton∙km-2). Within these FHs, we observed that the spatial distribution of the fleet is modulated by a dome-shaped daily CPUE. When CPUE decreased, the fleet moved towards contiguous zones, achieving new maximum CPUE values. Such displacements occurred every 4-17 days and, according to FH persistence and sea ice conditions, previously exploited zones were revisited.

This paper provides an update on the joint UK-Norway MMAK project, funded by the Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund, to improve current understanding of the regional and local-scale processes that influence the distribution of Antarctic krill in CCAMLR Area 48, focussing in particular on the South Orkney Islands region.  MMAK uses modelling studies at varying spatial and temporal resolutions to investigate the impact of physical and behavioural processes on the distribution of krill in this area, at scales relevant to the krill fishery and predators.  Preliminary analysis of a 20-year time series of simulated transport to the South Orkneys region demonstrates spatial and temporal variability in input and transfer to the wider Scotia Sea.  Results suggest that resolving the interaction of krill with sea ice is critical for determining the pathways and timescales of transport into and out of the region. Links between transport and large-scale climatic indices are now being explored and processes at a finer resolution are being investigated, which will include examination of the role of tides in determining on-shelf retention and transfer.

Most seafloor communities at depths below the photosynthesis zone rely on food that sinks through the water column. However, the nature and strength of this pelagic–benthic coupling and its influence on the structure and diversity of seafloor communities is unclear, especially around Antarctica where ecological data are sparse. Here we show that the strength of pelagic–benthic coupling along the East Antarctic shelf depends on both physical processes and the types of benthic organisms considered. In an approach based on modelling food availability, we combine remotely sensed sea-surface chlorophyll-a, a regional ocean model and diatom abundances from sediment grabs with particle tracking and show that fluctuating seabed currents are crucial in the redistribution of surface productivity at the seafloor. The estimated availability of suspended food near the seafloor correlates strongly with the abundance of benthic suspension feeders, while the deposition of food particles correlates with decreasing suspension feeder richness and more abundant deposit feeders. The modelling framework, which can be modified for other regions, has broad applications in conservation and management, as it enables spatial predictions of key components of seafloor biodiversity over vast regions around Antarctica.

Quantifying biological assemblages and their environment is a fundamental, yet statistically challenging task in conservation ecology. Here we use a recently-developed approach called Regions of Common Profile (RCP) to quantify and map the distribution of demersal fish assemblages in an ecologically significant region of the Southern Ocean to a) gain ecological and management insights and b) evaluate the utility of the new method for ecoregionalisation.

The RCP approach is a multi-species, model-based approach that can overcome many limitations of traditional distance-based approaches.  It simultaneously groups sites with a similar composition of species and describes the patterns of variation in assemblages using environmental data, allowing the prediction of assemblages across the study region. We apply RCP to a unique dataset of demersal fish occurrences across the northern Kerguelen Plateau to model and map the distribution of assemblages and examine the representativeness of the Heard Island and McDonald Island marine reserve.      

We demonstrate that the RCP approach allows a direct and quantitative interpretation of the composition of assemblages as well as their environment. Further, the model reasonably predicts the occurrence of individual species across the plateau as well as the species composition of sites.  We distinguish and map seven assemblages defined by depth, surface temperature and chlorophyll-a. Shallow-water assemblages contain a high proportion of endemic species, while deep-water assemblages contain more cosmopolitan species. With the exception of one deep-water assemblage, assemblages were well represented within the current Heard and McDonald Islands marine reserve.

The RCP is a valuable tool for classifying biological regions with a range of ecological and conservation management applications. Our results extend current ecological and biogeographic knowledge for the Northern Kerguelen Plateau and maps of the distribution of assemblages will be useful for ongoing spatial management.