CCAMLR

CCAMLR refers both to the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, signed in Canberra on 20 May 1980 and entered into force on 7 April 1982, and to the Commission it established. It is one of the core instruments of the Antarctic Treaty System, sitting alongside the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection.

The Convention emerged from concern in the late 1970s about expanding krill fisheries and their potential impact on Antarctic predators such as seals, whales, penguins, and seabirds. Its geographic scope is defined by the Antarctic Convergence, the biological boundary where cold Antarctic surface waters meet warmer sub-Antarctic waters, rather than by a fixed latitude.

CCAMLR is notable for pioneering an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (Article II), requiring that harvesting decisions account for predator-prey relationships and the wider marine ecosystem, not just target stock biomass. It also embeds a precautionary principle: harvesting must not foreclose ecosystem recovery over two or three decades.

The Commission is headquartered in Hobart, Australia, and operates by consensus among its Members, which include the original Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties plus acceding states and the European Union. This consensus rule has produced landmark agreements — notably the 2009 South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf MPA and the 2016 Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area, the world's largest MPA at the time of adoption — but has also blocked proposals, including repeated East Antarctic and Weddell Sea MPA proposals stalled by Russia and China.

Key tools include catch limits, vessel monitoring systems, a Catch Documentation Scheme for toothfish (Dissostichus spp.), and observer programs. CCAMLR has also led efforts against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing of Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish, sold commercially as Chilean sea bass.