ong the South Sandwich Islands into the transition zone between one-year pack ice and the so-called marginal ice zone, where they did another set of dives from inflatable craft in this “changing ice habitat”.
From there, the cruise headed in a north-easterly direction, and was concluded with a transect on the Greenwich Meridian, ending in Cape Town on October 16.
Joemat-Pettersson said she recognised the importance of this research cruise, and there was renewed interest in the South African fishing industry to look at this “massive, under-used resource”.
“With relative proximity to South Africa of the area with highest stock densities, new technologies are available to harvest krill more economically than in the past.
“South Africa already possesses a sophisticated fishing industry and industrial processing infrastructure, so it could easily benefit from harvesting krill.”
Concern over overfishing of southern krill
While krill is the basis of a substantial fishery, with about 70 percent of the catch being used as animal feed, there have been major concerns about the impacts of over-harvesting in the Southern Ocean/Antarctic waters ecosystem.
The krill catch rocketed during the five years from 1978 to 1982, dropped dramatically, and then climbed very quickly again between 1984 and 1992, after which harvesting crashed again.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) was established by international convention in 1982 with the objective of conserving Antarctic marine life, and specifically in response to the increasing commercial interest in krill.
Since then, the krill fishery has been carefully regulated by CCAMLR, of which South Africa is a founder member.
Conservation measures of the commission, which has its headquarters in Hobart, Tasmania, include compulsory notification and permission prior to fishing for krill, and for other target species like Patagonian toothfish, Antarctic toothfish and mackerel icefish.
The convention area, which covers around 10 percent of Earth’s surface, is defined in the CCAMLR convention as the area south of the Antarctic Convergence – the constantly shifting, natural oceanographic “boundary” feature where cold, northwards-flowing Antarctic waters meet the relatively warmer waters of the Subantarctic. The convention also applies in the area south of 60°S, to which the 1959 Antarctic Treaty applies.
The status and management of the fisheries are reviewed annually by the convention’s Scientific Committee and its specialist working groups, using the best available science and information that includes detailed data from the fisheries and fishery surveys, and the CCAMLR Scheme of International Scientific Observation.
There are established krill fishing areas in zones all around Antarctica, but at present there is fishing only in five zones between about 20°W and 80°W. The total allowable catch for this area is 620 000 tons. There is also a major exploratory krill fishing zone between 20°W and 30°E – directly in line with South Africa’s area of interest in Antarctica – but no legal fishing is being done here at present. - Sunday Argus