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Setting a Precautionary Catch Limit for Antarctic Krill

2002; Oceanography Society; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5670/oceanog.2002.12

2377-617X

Roger P. Hewitt, Jon Watkins, Mikio Naganobu, Pavel Tshernyshkov, Andrew S. Brierley, David A. Demer, Svetlana Kasatkina, Yoshimi Takao, Cathy Goss, Alexander Malyshko, Mark Brandon, So Kawaguchi, Volker Siegel, Philip N. Trathan, Jennifer Emery, Inigo Everson, D. G. M. Miller,

Marine animal studies overview

A revised precautionary catch limit for Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) in the Scotia Sea of 4 million tons was recently adopted by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).The limit was based on a total biomass of 44.3 million tons, as estimated from an acoustic and net survey of krill across the Scotia Sea sector of the Southern Ocean, and a harvest rate of 9.1%, as determined from an analysis of the risks of exceeding defined conservation criteria.We caution, however, that before the fishery can expand to the 4-inillion-ton level it will be necessary to establish mechanisms to avoid concentration of fishing effort, particularly in proximity to colonies of land-breeding krill predators, and to consider the effects of krill immigrating into the region from multiple sources, The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) concentrates and accelerates as it passes through Drake Passage transporting massive quantities of water from the Bellingshausen Sea (southeast Pacific) to the Scotia Sea (southwest Atlantic) sectors of the Southern Ocean.High concentrations of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) and krill predators are loca~d in this region (Marr, 1963;Laws, 1985) as well as an international fishery targeting krill (Agnew and Nicol, 1996).