![Major fishing statistical subareas established by FAO in the South Atlantic Ocean. From: FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department [online].](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341200727/figure/fig1/AS:888388341202944@1588819694259/Major-fishing-statistical-subareas-established-by-FAO-in-the-South-Atlantic-Ocean-From_Q320.jpg)
Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Chilean Antarctic krill fishery (2011-2016)
Abstract and Figures
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a key resource in the Antarctic region, as it is the primary food source for fish, whales, seals, flying birds, penguins and cephalopods. The high concentrations of the species and its possible uses -food for human and animal consumption and in the production of industrial, pharmaceutical and dietetic products- generates interest in the fishing industry. Its relevance motivated the implementation of administrative measures and international regulations for this fishery, which are summarized in this review. Chile is the only South American fishing country that has shown interest in participating in Antarctic krill fishery. Thus, between 1983 and 1994, the Fisheries Development Institute and some companies carried out fishing activities mainly aimed at prospecting and researching this species. However, starting in 2011, the factory trawler Betanzos began sustained commercial krill fishing aimed at krill meal production. This document analyzes the information collected by said vessel between 2011 and 2016, including areas of operation, fishing depth catches and CPUE obtained. Also, the main challenges faced by this fishery and the actions planned as solutions are assessed.
Figures - available via license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Content may be subject to copyright.
... Fishing operations were conducted in FAO Statistical Area 48, subdivided into Subareas 48.1 (West Antarctic Peninsula, Bransfield Strait, Gerlache Strait, and the South Shetland Islands), 48.2 (South Orkney Islands), and 48.3 (South Georgia Island) (Fig. 1). Krill fishing trawls were mainly carried out between 20 and 120 m depth, with a small number of hauls at greater depths (Arana et al., 2020). ...
Krill (Euphausia superba) catch is currently the most relevant fishery industry in Antarctic waters. This resource is a keystone species in the Antarctic food web, sustaining the contribution to the trophic ecology of many invertebrate and vertebrate species. To catch krill, part of the fleet in this fishery uses large mid-water nets that also retain a diversity of other organisms like plankton, meroplankton, and fish species as bycatch. Therefore, it is necessary to understand and evaluate the magnitude of this incidental catch, as well as the potential interactions between krill fishing gear with seabirds and mammals. To estimate the composition and extent of bycatch for this fishery included 784 samples of 25 kg and an equal number of 1 kg sub-samples obtained from Antarctic krill catches in Subarea 48, between years 2012 and 2016. A total of 15 fish species were identified along with the record of five other taxa and other unidentified specimens. The most relevant fish species bycaught by weight were mackerel icefish Champsocephalus gunnari, South Georgia icefish Pseudochaenichthys georgianus, and painted notie Lepidonotothen larseni. Additionally, 20 interactions with seabirds and nine interactions with Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) were registered. In the five years of operations, only three seabirds died, and only two individuals of A. gazelle caught by the net were killed.
Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, have a circumpolar distribution but are concentrated within the south-west Atlantic sector, where they support a unique food web and a commercial fishery. Within this sector, our first goal was to produce quantitative distribution maps of all six ontogenetic life stages of krill (eggs, nauplii plus metanauplii, calyptopes, furcilia, juveniles, and adults), based on a compilation of all available post 1970s data. Using these maps, we then examined firstly whether “hotspots” of egg production and early stage nursery
occurred, and secondly whether the available habitat was partitioned between the successive life stages during the austral summer and autumn, when krill densities can be high. To address these questions, we compiled larval krill density records and extracted data spanning 41 years (1976–2016) from the existing KRILLBASE-abundance and KRILLBASE-length-frequency databases. Although adult males and females of spawning age were widely distributed, the distribution of eggs, nauplii and metanauplii indicates that spawning is most intense over the shelf and shelf slope. This contrasts with the distributions
of calyptope and furcilia larvae, which were concentrated further offshore, mainly in the Southern Scotia Sea. Juveniles, however, were strongly concentrated over shelves along the Scotia Arc. Simple environmental analyses based on water depth and mean water temperature suggest that krill associate with different habitats over the course of their life cycle. From the early to late part of the austral season, juvenile distribution moves from ocean to shelf, opposite in direction to that for adults. Such habitat partitioning may reduce intraspecific competition for food, which has been suggested to occur when densities are exceptionally high during years of strong recruitment. It also prevents any potential cannibalism by adults on younger stages. Understanding the location of krill spawning and juvenile development in relation to potentially overlapping fishing activities is needed to protect the health of the south-west Atlantic sector ecosystem.
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba Dana, 1850) exemplifies the key role of marine crustaceans in fisheries, foodwebs, and biogeochemical cycles. Ecological understanding and policy decisions require information on population trends. We have therefore worked with international colleagues to publish KRILLBASE, a database of fishery-independent krill population information for every decade since the 1970s. These data were used by Cox et al. (2018) who dispute the evidence for a late twentieth-century decline in krill density (number per unit area) in the Southwest Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean and claim to overturn "much of recent thinking about climate-driven change in krill populations." They support this claim with an analysis which reaffirms one non-significant result from an earlier paper but does not challenge the five significant results from that paper or those of other studies which support a decline. In this comment we examine the methods which led Cox and coauthors to conclude that krill density has been stable over the last 40 years. Although these authors provide a potentially useful approach, we show that their analysis was biased by the exclusion of usable net types, the inclusion of negatively biased data and down-weighting of high densities in the early part of the analysis period, the absence of recent data from the north of the sector, and a lack of statistical hypothesis testing. These factors maximise the chances of failure to detect a real decline. To aid future analyses we provide recommendations to supplement those which accompany KRILLBASE. We also suggest the need for consensus scientific advice on krill population dynamics based on agreed standards of evidence, evaluation of uncertainty, and a thorough understanding of the data. This will be more useful to policy makers and other stakeholders than polarised opinions. Meanwhile, the evidence for a decline in krill density still stands.
High-latitude ecosystems are among the fastest warming on the planet¹. Polar species may be sensitive to warming and ice loss, but data are scarce and evidence is conflicting2–4. Here, we show that, within their main population centre in the southwest Atlantic sector, the distribution of Euphausia superba (hereafter, ‘krill’) has contracted southward over the past 90 years. Near their northern limit, numerical densities have declined sharply and the population has become more concentrated towards the Antarctic shelves. A concomitant increase in mean body length reflects reduced recruitment of juvenile krill. We found evidence for environmental controls on recruitment, including a reduced density of juveniles following positive anomalies of the Southern Annular Mode. Such anomalies are associated with warm, windy and cloudy weather and reduced sea ice, all of which may hinder egg production and the survival of larval krill⁵. However, the total post-larval density has declined less steeply than the density of recruits, suggesting that survival rates of older krill have increased. The changing distribution is already perturbing the krill-centred food web⁶ and may affect biogeochemical cycling7,8. Rapid climate change, with associated nonlinear adjustments in the roles of keystone species, poses challenges for the management of valuable polar ecosystems³.
The Antarctic marine environment is changing, and changes in the Southwest Atlantic sector have included decreases in sea ice and increases in water temperature. Associated with these changes is a reported 38% and 81% per decade decline in the numerical density (hereafter density) of Antarctic krill Euphausia superbaDana, 1850, between 1976 and 2003. Few changes in other components of the ecosystem that could be attributed to such a change, such as a mass decline in krill-dependent predators, have been detected. In an ecosystem so dependent on this keystone species, a massive population decline in krill ought to have had an obvious effect. In the absence of such an effect, it is timely to revisit the issue of the purported decline in krill density. The original analysis that indicated a decline in krill density was based on the 2004 version of KRILLBASE, a database of net samples. We analysed the publicly available and updated version (version 1, accessed 30 November 2017) and our analyses did not suggest a significant decline in krill density. Rather, after accounting for sampling heterogeneity and habitat variables, average krill density appears to have been stable but with considerable inter-annual variability. Since our results were unable to find any evidence for a decline in krill density we recommend a re-appraisal of many of the paradigms that underlie much of the recent thinking about ecosystem change Antarctic waters. Such a revision is necessary to provide a firmer foundation for predictions of the effects of climate change and resource extraction on the Southern Ocean ecosystem.
The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a highly productive marine ecosystem where extended periods of change have been observed in the form of glacier retreat, reduction of sea-ice cover and shifts in marine populations, among others. The physical environment on the shelf is known to be strongly influenced by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flowing along the shelf slope and carrying warm, nutrient-rich water, by cold waters flooding into the northern Bransfield Strait from the Weddell Sea, by an extensive network of glaciers and ice shelves, and by strong seasonal to inter-annual variability in sea-ice formation and air–sea interactions, with significant modulation by climate modes like El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode. However, significant gaps have remained in understanding the exchange processes between the open ocean and the shelf, the pathways and fate of oceanic water intrusions, the shelf heat and salt budgets, and the long-term evolution of the shelf properties and circulation. Here, we review how recent advances in long-term monitoring programmes, process studies and newly developed numerical models have helped bridge these gaps and set future research challenges for the WAP system.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The marine system of the West Antarctic Peninsula: status and strategy for progress in a region of rapid change’.
This paper explains the management of the Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) fishery in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, and current knowledge about the state of the regional krill stock. In this region, krill fishing is permitted in an area of approximately 3.5 million km2 which is divided into four subareas (labelled Subareas 48.1 to 48.4) for management and reporting purposes. The effective regional catch limit (or ‘trigger level’), established in 1991, is 0.62 million tonnes year–1, equivalent to ~1% of the regional biomass estimated in 2000. Each subarea has also had its own catch limit, between 0.093 and 0.279 million tonnes year–1, since 2009. There is some evidence for a decline in the abundance of krill in the 1980s, but no evidence of a further decline in recent decades. Local-scale monitoring programs have been established in three of the subareas to monitor krill biomass in survey grids covering between 10 000 and 125 000 km2. Cautious extrapolation from these local monitoring programs provides conservative estimates of the regional biomass in recent years. This suggests that fishing at the trigger level would be equivalent to a long-term exploitation rate (annual catch divided by biomass) of <7%, which is below the 9.3% level considered appropriate to maintain the krill stock and support krill predators.
Estimates of productivity of Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, are dependent on accurate models of growth and reproduction. Incorrect growth models, specifically those giving unrealistically high production, could lead to over-exploitation of the krill population if those models are used in setting catch limits. Here we review available approaches to modelling productivity and note that existing models do not account for the interactions between growth and reproduction and variable environmental conditions. We develop a new energetics moult-cycle (EMC) model which combines energetics and the constraints on growth of the moult-cycle. This model flexibly accounts for regional, inter- and intra-annual variation in temperature, food supply, and day length. The EMC model provides results consistent with the general expectations for krill growth in length and mass, including having thin krill, as well as providing insights into the effects that increasing temperature may have on growth and reproduction. We recommend that this new model be incorporated into assessments of catch limits for Antarctic krill. © International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 2017. All rights reserved.