Antarctic krill Archives - Saving Seafood

Recent whale deaths highlight risks from Antarctica’s booming krill fishery

October 31, 2024 — Two humpback whales were found dead and another seriously injured this year in huge nets used to collect krill for fishmeal and omega-3 pills near Antarctica, The Associated Press has learned.

The whale deaths, which have not been previously reported, were discussed during recent negotiations between the U.S., China, Russia and two dozen other countries in which officials failed to make progress on long-debated conservation goals and lifted some fishing limits in the Southern Ocean that have been in place since 2009.

Taken together, the whale deaths and rollback of the catch limits represent a setback for the remote krill fishery, which has boomed in recent years and is set to expand even further following the acquisition of its biggest harvester, Norway’s Aker BioMarine, by a deep-pocketed American private equity firm.

AP journalists last year spent more than two weeks in the frigid waters around Antarctica aboard a conservation vessel operated by Sea Shepherd Global to take a rare, up-close look at the world’s southernmost fishery. As part of that investigation, the AP followed the tiny crustacean on its journey from the fragile ecosystem, where it is the main nourishment for whales, to salmon farms in Europe, Canada and Australia, pet food manufacturers in China and a former ice cream factory in Houston that produces 80% of the world’s nutrient-rich krill oil.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Scientists: Fishing boats compete with whales and penguins for Antarctic krill

July 19, 2023 — Two huge fishing vessels make their way through the icy waters of the Southern Ocean, passing among a pod of dozens of whales while slowly hauling on board bulging nets hundreds of meters long. The scene recalls a bygone era before commercial whaling was banned. Now, however, the vessels are not fishing whales but whale food: swarms of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a small shrimp-like crustacean at the base of the Southern Ocean food chain.

“In the 20th century they used to follow large swarms of krill to help locate whales,” Matthew Savoca, a research scientist at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, told Mongabay. “And now potentially the krill fishery is doing the opposite, using whales to find krill.”

The scene above was filmed in March off the South Orkney Islands in Antarctica during a joint voyage by the nongovernmental organizations Sea Shepherd Global and Tasmania-based Bob Brown Foundation. The footage showed fishing trawlers moving through a pod of about 100 fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), animals listed as vulnerable by the IUCN that in the Southern Ocean feed almost exclusively on krill. The video proved a “huge and growing conflict [for krill] between whales and supertrawlers in the Antarctic,” a Bob Brown Foundation media release stated.

In February, Savoca co-authored a report in the journal Ecology documenting a similar case that his co-authors had filmed a year earlier near Coronation Island, the largest of the South Orkneys. On that occasion, scientists encountered four trawlers fishing in the presence of what they described as a “remarkably large aggregation of foraging fin whales” numbering about 1,000 animals.

“This has been happening for years,” Savoca said. “It’s just what we were able to record. The point of the videos is alerting the scientific world that this is happening and will continue to happen, unless we change our policy about how we fish.”

Read the full article at Mongabay

Climate change and overfishing threaten once ‘endless’ Antarctic krill

August 12, 2022 — Tiny, filter-feeding crustaceans that live in the Southern Ocean — have long existed in mind-boggling numbers. A 2009 study estimated that the species has a biomass of between 300 million and 500 million metric tons, which is more than any other multicellular wild animal in the world. Not only are these teensy animals great in number, but they’re known to lock away large quantities of carbon through their feeding and excrement cycles. One study estimates that krill remove 23 million metric tons of carbon each year — about the amount of carbon produced by 35 million combustion-engine cars — while another suggests that krill take away 39 million metric tons each year. Krill are also a main food source for many animals for which Antarctica is famous: whales, seals, fish, penguins, and a range of other seabirds.

But Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are not “limitless,” as they were once described in the 1960s; they’re a finite resource under an increasing amount of pressure due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change impacts like the loss of sea ice and ocean acidification. While krill are nowhere close to being threatened with extinction, the 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that there’s a high likelihood that climate-induced stressors would present considerable risks for the global supply of krill.

“Warming that is occurring along the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea has caused the krill stocks in those areas to shrink and the center of that population has moved southwards,” Kim Bernard, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, wrote to Mongabay via email while stationed in the Antarctic Peninsula. “This tells us already that krill numbers aren’t endless.”

Concerns are amassing around one place in particular: a krill hotspot and nursery at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula known as “Area 48,” which harbors about 60 million metric tons of krill. Not only has this area become a key foraging ground for many species that rely on krill, but it also attracts about a dozen industrial fishing vessels each year. The amount of krill they catch has been steadily increasing over the years. In 2007, vessels caught 104,728 metric tons in Area 48; in 2020, they caught 450,781 metric tons.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the group responsible for protecting krill, has imposed rules to try and regulate krill fishing in the Southern Ocean, but many conservationists and scientists say the rules need to be updated to reflect the changing dynamics of the marine environment. That said, many experts argue that the Antarctic krill fishery can be sustainable if managed correctly.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Environmental NGOs, fishing companies split on health of Antarctic krill fishery

November 15, 2021 — The recent meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) heightened divisions between commercial krill-fishing companies and environmental non-governmental organizations claiming the Antarctic krill population is facing an existential threat.

Oslo, Norway-based Aker Biomarine, the world’s largest krill-fishing and -processing company, said the CCAMLR meeting resulted in the continuance of sustainable management practices for the fishery, pointing to a one-year extension of a krill-conservation instrument, CM 51-07, to allow more time to finalize a comprehensive krill-management strategy.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

New study finds variation in climate conditions impact krill production in Antarctica

August 9, 2021 — New research from Oregon State University recently published in the Marine Ecology Progress Series indicates climate conditions have a significant impact on Antarctic krill reproductive success.

Because krill is such an important component of healthy ecosystems, the impacts of krill abundance be far-reaching, the study found.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Study predicts alarming krill drop by end of the century

August 30, 2016 — Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) habitat is undergoing a continuous deterioration process, which could lead to a reduction of up to 80 per cent by the end of the century.

Given the key role that this small crustacean plays in the marine food chain, its decline would cause other problems for species that depend on it as a food source, such as whales, penguins, seals, squid and fish, among other marine organisms.

This dark forecast comes from a study performed at Yale University by Andrea Piñones, a researcher at the Research Centre for High Latitude Marine Ecosystem Dynamics (IDEAL) and the Advanced Study Centre in Arid Zones (CEAZA), along with Alexey Fedorov, a researcher at Yale University.

Piñoness explains that the krill population has already fallen between 80 and 90 per cent since 1970, a situation that has generated a broad scientific debate on the causes of this decline.

In this regard, many believe that this is related to the changes in the environment, particularly with warming Antarctic waters.

To carry out the study, whose results were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers combined climate simulations — based on the projections of the international panel of climate change –, with a krill growth model. Thus, they determined that with an increase in water temperature and sea ice melting, its habitat could reduce up to 80 per cent by 2100.

Read the full story at FiS United States