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Conservation in the Scotia Sea in light of expiring regulations and disrupted negotiations
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2022
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Source: Conservation Biology, 36, e13925
[PDF-863.52 KB]
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Journal Title:Conservation Biology
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Description:If, by 1 December 2022, the total allowable catch of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) taken from the Scotia Sea (here, waters between 50–70°S and 20–70°W) (Figure 1) is not partitioned in space and time, the objective of an international conservation regime will be jeopardized. The objective of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is conservation (CCAMLR, 1980), and the management provision that distributes krill catches throughout the Scotia Sea expires in November. This provision mitigates the risk that concentrated fishing will adversely affect krill predators. Unless the 26 members of CCAMLR achieve consensus to extend this provision or establish an alternative that partitions the catch and thereby limits concentrated fishing, some krill predators are likely to be negatively affected. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, CCAMLR might have already adopted suitable partitioning. Krill are important prey for numerous predators (Laws, 1985) and provide globally relevant ecosystem services (Cavanagh et al., 2021) (Appendix S2); these facts underpin management of the krill fishery. Climate change and increasing whale populations will likely modulate the production and distribution of krill (Savoca et al., 2021; Sylvester et al., 2021) and thus, its availability to predators and the provision of its ecosystem services. To conserve the marine ecosystem in the face of change, CCAMLR requires a precautionary management strategy for the krill fishery that flexibly adjusts catch limits. The current strategy uses fixed catch limits, and CCAMLR has not updated these limits for over a decade.
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Source:Conservation Biology, 36, e13925
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Rights Information:CC BY-NC-ND
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