- Norway has proposed almost doubling the catch limit for krill in the Southern Ocean, a proposal that has exacerbated tensions at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Australia. Conservationists have expressed concern because the continent’s iconic wildlife depend on krill for sustenance.
- The CEO of Aker BioMarine, a Norwegian company that dominates the Southern Ocean krill catch, said it has been working with CCAMLR member countries to advance the proposal as well as create a marine protected area around the Antarctic Peninsula.
- Chinese and Russian delegates have voted for years to veto new marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean.
- Russia came into the spotlight at this year’s meeting following its arrest of Leonid Pshenychnov, a researcher at the Ukrainian Institute of Fisheries, Marine Ecology and Oceanography and a longtime member of the Ukrainian delegation to CCAMLR.
Norway proposed almost doubling the catch limit for krill in the Southern Ocean during the annual conference of the intergovernmental body that manages Antarctic fisheries taking place Oct. 20-31, according to confidential documents seen by Mongabay. The proposal heightened diplomatic tensions at the meeting, which had already been overshadowed by the arrest of a Ukrainian delegate by Russian authorities in Crimea, an incident that several sources linked to his activities at the body, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
Krill (Euphausia superba) is a shrimp-like crustacean, just a few centimeters long that lives in schools. It occupies the base of the food web for numerous wildlife populations in the Southern Ocean, including penguins, seals, finfish and seabirds. Concern over the sustainability of krill fishing prompted the creation of CCAMLR in the 1980s. In the 2000s, the debate reemerged due to the rapid growth in catches driven by demand for aquaculture feed, human food supplements and pet food. Today, conservationists warn that krill must be preserved to avoid further stressing the Antarctic marine ecosystem during a time of rapid disruption due to global warming.
A representative of Norway acknowledged to Mongabay the country’s position as outlined in the documents. “The proposal is science-driven and developed within Norway’s broader commitment to sustainable fisheries management,” Bjørn Krafft, a scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research and scientific representative for the Norwegian delegation to CCAMLR, told Mongabay in an email. Krafft declined to answer specific questions about the contents of the proposal, citing the confidentiality restrictions imposed on delegates until the end of the meeting but said it “aims to balance responsible harvesting with ecosystem protection.”
In a video call from Hobart, Australia, where the CCAMLR meeting is taking place, Matts Johansen, CEO of Aker BioMarine, a Norwegian company accounting for nearly 64% of the Southern Ocean krill catch in 2023, told Mongabay the company has been working for months with several member countries to advance Norway’s proposal “hand in hand” with a separate proposal to create a marine protected area (MPA) around the Antarctic Peninsula.
“We’ve been having several meetings with delegations from the different countries to try to prepare everyone” to support both proposals, Johansen told us. “Without horse trading between them, because that’s against the principle of several nations,” he said.
Johansen told Mongabay that Aker BioMarine has also held frequent discussions over the past six months with the Chinese and Russian governments to facilitate an agreement. Chinese and Russian delegations have vetoed the creation of new MPAs in the Southern Ocean for years, despite CCAMLR members having pledged to create “a comprehensive and representative network of marine protected areas” in this region since 2009.
Russia came into the spotlight at the start of this year’s meeting, when Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, condemned the arrest of Leonid Pshenychnov, a researcher at the Ukrainian Institute of Fisheries, Marine Ecology and Oceanography and a longtime member of the Ukrainian delegation to CCAMLR.
“Dr. Pshenichnov’s arrest and imprisonment without any evidence is a blatant human rights abuse,” Myroshnychenko said, addressing the meeting in Hobart on Oct. 20. According to the Ukrainian diplomat, the 70-year-old scientist’s detention is related to his activity within CCAMLR: “He has a distinguished record of research and contribution to Antarctica’s conservation including support for the establishment of marine protected areas,” he said.
The Norwegian proposal
CCAMLR is an international body composed of 27 members (26 countries and the European Union) whose mandate is the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources through an ecosystem-based approach.
This year’s meeting in Hobart was highly anticipated, after the 2025 krill fishery made a record catch of 620,000 metric tons in six months, reaching the trigger level established by CCAMLR and causing an unprecedented precautionary closure of the fishery on Aug. 1.
According to several analysts, the 2025 record catch is due to CCAMLR’s failure at its previous meeting to renew a conservation measure known as CM 51-07. This measure distributed the fishing effort in several areas to avoid concentration around the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Orkney Islands and South Georgia Island. These areas have the highest concentrations of krill and are the main feeding grounds for wildlife that rely on them, including seabirds, penguins, seals and whales.
The northwestern Antarctic Peninsula lies at the center of a proposed 650,000-square-kilometer (251,000-square-mile) MPA. Chile and Argentina submitted the MPA proposal to CCAMLR in 2017, and Russia and China have vetoed it every year since.
Norway proposes that CCAMLR should activate a new “Krill Fishery Management Approach.” The proposal would reinstate a spatial allocation of krill catches, maintaining the overall annual catch limit of 500,769 metric tons set under the expired CM 51-07 for three fishing areas: the Weddell Sea, the eastern Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney Islands. At the same time, it would increase the annual catch limit in the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula from 155,000 metric tons to 668,000 metric tons.
This would almost double the overall krill catch limit from 620,000 metric tons to nearly 1.2 million metric tons per year — presumably enough to feed more than 2.5 million Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) for a year, extrapolating from the species’ 1,200-krill-per-day diet as described by WWF. Norway’s proposal also includes provisions for ecosystem monitoring and scientific assessment, particularly to evaluate the impact of krill fishing on wildlife populations.
“The core of our proposal is to move away from a fixed catch limit system (which is not based on scientific data),” Krafft told Mongabay. “The catch limit can be adjusted both upwards and downwards, based on scientific monitoring and ecosystem indicators,” he wrote.
Diplomatic tensions
According to a source on a member country’s national CCAMLR committee, who shared the documents outlining Norway’s proposal and requested anonymity to avoid retaliation for sharing confidential information, many CCAMLR delegations are “critics of this proposal” and it is unlikely to be approved, particularly due to opposition by countries that have been working for years to establish the Antarctic Peninsula MPA. “The Norwegian proposal means in practical terms to eliminate 50% of the proposal of the MPA tabled by Chile and Argentina, in terms of areas to be protected,” through a seasonal opening and closing mechanism, the source told us.
Dan Crockett, executive director of the U.K.-based NGO Blue Marine Foundation, called the proposal “shocking” after learning of it. “To me, as a conservationist, it feels like the MPA is being used as a ransom, a bargain chip to get more krill,” he told Mongabay.
Aker BioMarine’s CEO also said the Norwegian proposal is unlikely to be approved this year: “I don’t think it’s likely that we will have a conclusion in this meeting, because there’s not enough time to go through all the details,” Johansen said. “But we can have a direction, so that we can have focus in the coming 12 months.”
According to Johansen, Aker BioMarine’s priority is to get the MPA around the Antarctic Peninsula, but to do so it’s necessary to raise krill catches. “We think you need something for the countries that are focused on fishery management for them to accept the Marine Protected Area,” he said.
The Ukrainian scientist
Ukrainian officials said they believe thwarting the approval of the Antarctic Peninsula MPA is the reason Russian authorities arrested Pshenychnov in Kerch, Crimea, in September, a few weeks before the meeting of CCAMLR’s Scientific Committee.
The National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine said in a written statement that the scientist, a member of the Ukrainian delegation to CCAMLR since 2016, should be considered “the first political prisoner in the history of Antarctica,” because he was imprisoned for supporting the establishment of the MPA, which “is seen as putting restrictions on Russian industrial fishing.”
Pshenychnov holds a Russian passport, issued to most residents of Crimea after Russia annexed it in 2014. For this reason the allegations against him state that he “defected to the enemy’s side” in assisting the Ukrainian CCAMLR delegation and undermined Russia’s krill fishing in Antarctica through a Ukrainian proposal to restrict krill harvesting, The Guardian reported.
Russia was the first country to fish for krill in the Southern Ocean in the 1970s. Although no Russian vessel has done so in the last two decades, an official CCAMLR report shows that one, the Komandor, owned by the Kamchatka based company Akros, was licensed to take part in the 2024 fishing season.
The Russian allegations against the scientist also state that the establishment of an MPA would curtail the possibility for Russia “to develop hydrocarbon resources” on Antarctica’s continental shelf, according to ABC News. Russia has reportedly identified vast oil reserves in the Weddell Sea, although the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 is regarded as prohibiting their exploitation.
The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canberra and the Russian delegation at CCAMLR did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment on Pshenychnov’s detention.
Banner image: Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). Image by Dr. Wayne Trivelpiece via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
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