What is the Southern Ocean Fisheries and Climate Change activity?
The Southern Ocean surrounds the continent of Antarctica. The Southern Ocean is one of the largest marine ecosystems in the world. The cold and often ice-covered waters harbour a web of species from the smallest single-celled plants and animals to the largest mammal on Earth, the blue whale.
Southern Ocean fisheries and Climate Change is a programme of research led by the British Antarctic Survey on the maintenance of, and potential threats to, ecosystem services derived from the Southern Ocean.
The programme will provide information to policy makers, particularly the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (that leads on UK policy for Antarctica) with the information they need on managing ecosystems in a changing environment.
(Read a story about this Programme's work on the LWEC website)
What will the activity do?
The activity will
- Carry out comprehensive monitoring studies of key ecosystem components, including the biomass of Antarctic krill and the performance and breeding output of a range of krill dependent predators.
- Carry out modelling to relate the performance of ecosystem components to environmental variability and change, including prediction of future change based on climate change predicitons.
- Carry out modelling to determine the best way to protect the Southern Ocean ecosystem through structured allocation of the krill harvest.
This will determine how best to apportion the total allowable catch so that it doesn’t result in excessive catch being taken close to land-based predators during times of the year when this would adversly affect the predators.
- Collaborate with groups such as the US Antarctic Marine Living Resources Group and the Australian Antarctic Division.
- Provide advice to the UK government through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Polar Regions Unit, about the Southern Ocean ecosystem in order to help determine UK policy with respect to management of the Southern Ocean.
This advice covers all aspects of the krill fishery, including about the biomass of krill, the total catch, the resource demands of predators and how to allocate catch to avoid impacting predators.
- Help to influence international management directions according to UK policy.
Expected impacts
1. Quantification of the risk that important stocks will no longer support sustainable fisheries
The programme will improve understanding of the future risk of stock collapse due to environmental change, by improving knowledge of the processes by which feeding, spawning and recruitment are influenced by environmental variability and change.
The findings will feed into the the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (the regional fisheries management organisation for Antarctic fisheries).
This produces conservation measures with immediate and long-lasting impact, as meaures are agreed by the commission and become binding on all members.
2. Quantification of the risk that other ecosystem components are also seriously impacted
The programme will improve understanding of the future risks to species that compete with fisheries or which are incidentally affected by harvesting, by improving our knowledge of food web dynamics and energy flow.
3. Development of plans to spatially and temporally mitigate harvesting impacts on the ecosystem
The programme will develop tools to improve protection of the Southern Ocean marine ecosystem by delineating areas vulnerable to environmental change. For example, work undertaken by scientists led to the designation by Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 2009 of the world’s first Marine Protected Area located entirely in the High Seas.
Similarly, work by scientists, also in 2009, led to Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources adopting a Climate Change Resolution that was forwarded to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen Summit in 2009.
In previous years research has been used to improve mitigation measures designed to reduce the incidental impacts of harvesting on seabirds, such as albatrosses and petrels.
Who will benefit?
Policy
This work forms part of the UK contribution to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which aims to ensure that Southern Ocean fisheries are managed well and sustainably in the context of environmental variability and change.
Society
The activity will deliver information to non governmental organisations such as the WWF
Business
The activity will provide information to owners of fishing vessels.
PROGRAMME FACTS AND FIGURES
Start and end dates: 01/04/2007 to 31/08/2015
Other organisations involved:
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office are also partners.
Website: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk//bas_research/science/marine/southern_ocean.php