In For The Krill: Rush Is On To Harvest An Untapped Bounty

The Age

Monday November 5, 2007

Andrew Darby

INDUSTRIAL fishing companies are gearing up for the rush to exploit the great untapped seafood: Antarctic krill.

Plans to take up 746,000 tonnes of the shrimp-like crustaceans were disclosed at the weekend in Hobart after an international meeting agreed on new measures to control krill fishing. For years the catch had hovered around 100,000 tonnes.

Scientists are still trying to calculate the total amount of krill in the Antarctic, where the best estimate stands at around half a billion tonnes, according to Steve Nicol, a senior scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.

In an area of the Southern Ocean off the far reaches of the Australian Antarctic Territory alone, a catch limit of 2.6 million tonnes has been set, on an estimated biomass of 15.9 million tonnes.

"Our concern is that we have catch limits set in fairly large areas," said Dr Nicol. "Despite the size of these catch limits, it is possible to take them out of a very small area, meaning there could be strong local effects."

Krill is at the centre of the polar food web, providing the main food for most Antarctic birds and marine mammals. But there is rising demand for krill, particularly for use in aquaculture, pharmaceuticals, and as food additives.

Its use as human seafood has been restricted by its failure to keep. Dead krill rots quickly. But new fishing and processing techniques mean that the peak historic catch of 528,000 tonnes, by Soviet fleets in 1982, is likely to be eclipsed soon. A Norwegian company, Aker, appears to have cracked the processing puzzle by gathering krill in mid-water trawl nets, then using a giant hose to pump the catch directly into the onboard factory of its super trawler, Saga Sea, able to catch around 50,000 tonnes of krill a year.

The 25-nation Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources also heard at its annual meeting last week of plans for seven big Dutch-owned pair trawlers to enter the krill fishery. The pair trawlers would operate by dragging between them a net with a mouth many hundreds of metres wide, while a third vessel steamed behind pumping krill out of the narrow end of the net.

Britain banned the use of pair trawlers in the English Channel in 2004 after a Greenpeace campaign highlighted the deaths of hundreds of dolphins. Other predators such as seals can be attracted to trawl nets for the bounty they hold, and drown inside them.

The international environment group, the Antarctic and Southern Oceans Coalition, said that the unprecedented level of interest meant the expanding fishery may pose a significant threat to krill predators, especially penguins. "It's not inaccurate to say that this is the last unexploited fishery in the world," said coalition campaigner Virginia Gascon. "And if you mess up with krill, you mess up the entire ecosystem."

Most krill fishing is expected to take place in the far South Atlantic, but the notifications and the setting of a catch limit mean some could occur off the Australian Antarctic Territory.

The Australian delegation leader at the commission, Tony Press, said with krill predicted to become one of the world's largest fisheries, the Government had successfully backed new regulations. These included remote monitoring of the krill ships, more frequent reporting of catches and the introduction of trigger levels to spread the catch over a wider area.

© 2007 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home