Photo by Torsten Dederichs

The Antarctic krill fishery closed on 12 August after vessels reached the 620,000-tonne precautionary catch limit set by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the second consecutive year the fishery has shut early. Harvesting vessels operated by Aker QRILL Company, the harvesting arm of Norwegian firm Aker BioMarine, which has supplied around 63% of the fishery’s catch over the past decade, have ceased operations and are preparing to leave the fishing grounds in Area 48.

Why the closure matters

Krill underpin the Southern Ocean food web, feeding penguins, whales, seals and numerous other species. Fishing has become increasingly concentrated around the Antarctic Peninsula, where predators rely on dense krill swarms during breeding and feeding seasons, and nearly 90% of catches there this year were taken after 1 April, outside the penguin breeding season. While the industry has voluntarily closed roughly 74,000 square kilometres of buffer zones around penguin colonies since 2019, conservation group Sea Shepherd said the repeated early closures trace back to a 2024 CCAMLR decision to let lapse a measure that, for 16 years previously, had required krill catch to be spread across larger areas “to prevent fishing pressure from becoming too concentrated.”

The closure follows the IUCN’s recent reclassification of both the emperor penguin and the Antarctic fur seal as Endangered, citing shrinking krill availability as a contributing factor, and comes while conservation groups ASOC and WWF have a formal objection to the Marine Stewardship Council’s recent recertification of the fishery as sustainable still under review.

Industry: the system is working

Aker BioMarine has framed the early closure as evidence its management is functioning correctly rather than a cause for concern. “A well-managed fishery is the starting point for everything we do,” Aker BioMarine CEO Matts Johansen said. “When the fishery closes on reaching its precautionary limit, it shows that the management behind the ingredients we deliver is working exactly as it should. This is a concrete example of the responsible management our operations are built on.” The closure follows a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that named Antarctic fishing areas a “global benchmark for precautionary, ecosystem-based fisheries management,” rating all 15 stocks assessed in the region, including krill, as 100% biologically sustainable. Industry figures also point out that the 620,000-tonne trigger represents roughly 11% of CCAMLR’s precautionary catch limit for the wider Area 48, and less than 1% of the estimated total krill biomass in the region.

Aker QRILL CEO Webjørn Barstad said fishing this season had been spread across roughly 1,000 kilometres, including areas north, central and south of the Bransfield Strait and north and central Gerlache Strait. “This season provides another useful real-world evidence that the fishery can operate across a wide geographical area, and the closing proves that the system works,” he said. “The responsible solution moving forward should now be to build that distribution into the management system rather than relying on annual variations in krill abundance and fleet behavior. That means protecting large and important areas while establishing a science-based management system for the areas where fishing can be further developed.” Aker BioMarine and Aker QRILL both say they support establishing the proposed 455,000km² Domain 1 Marine Protected Area around the Antarctic Peninsula, alongside a modernised krill management approach.

Conservationists: a governance system under strain

Campaigners argue the repeated closures expose a widening gap between conservation need and how the fishery is actually managed. José María Figueres, former President of Costa Rica and chair of the Antarctica2030 campaign, saidthe second consecutive early closure “should be a wake-up call for everyone who cares about the future of Antarctica,” framing the issue in a separate statement carried by The Fishing Daily as one of precaution rather than simple arithmetic: “This is not simply about reaching a catch limit. It is about whether the international community is managing human activities in one of Earth’s last great wildernesses with the level of precaution that science demands.”

Former UK environment secretary Zac Goldsmith, an Antarctica2030 champion, said sustainability certification should prompt greater scrutiny rather than less. “When the management system’s own scientific advisers acknowledge the system is falling far short, that should prompt more, not less scrutiny,” he said. “This must really be a wake-up call for government members of CCAMLR. The world will not forgive continued stalling and failure.” Campaigners are urging CCAMLR members, who meet again this October, to restore spatial protections, modernise krill management, establish the long-delayed Antarctic Peninsula Marine Protected Area, and commit to safeguarding 30% of the Southern Ocean by 2030. CCAMLR members first agreed to build a representative system of Marine Protected Areas across the Southern Ocean as far back as 2009, but no new MPA has been adopted since 2016.

A CCAMLR spokesperson told SeafoodSource that fishery notices, including projected closure dates, are shared only confidentially with members and authorised vessels, and are not intended for public release, after conservation groups issued public warnings about the approaching catch limit several days before the industry’s own announcement. The spokesperson added that other conservation measures remain active, including seabird and marine mammal bycatch mitigation and a catch and effort reporting system.

What happens next

Two proposals are due to be considered at CCAMLR’s annual meeting in October: establishment of the Antarctic Peninsula Marine Protected Area, and a modernised krill fishery management approach that would distribute catch across smaller management units. Both have backing from Aker BioMarine and Aker QRILL as well as conservation groups, though the measures will require consensus among CCAMLR’s 27 members to be adopted.