For the second season in a row, the Antarctic krill fleet looks set to be sent home early. Catches are closing on the 620,000-tonne trigger limit in Area 48, and the fishery is expected to shut before August is out.
The same thing happened last year, ending the season around four months ahead of schedule - the first early closure the fishery had ever seen. Two in a row makes it a trend, and it arrives just before CCAMLR members gather in October.
Volume is not the sticking point. Location is.
Krill underpin the Southern Ocean food web while feeding a commercial market in omega-3 supplements, fish feed and pet food. Against total biomass, the catch is modest. But Conservation Measure 51-07, the rule that forced the fleet to spread its effort across zones, lapsed at the end of 2024 with nothing to replace it. CCAMLR's Scientific Committee described the resulting concentration as "not precautionary" and pressed for reform. The 2025 meeting delivered none.
Industry reads the same numbers as reassurance. After last year's shutdown, Aker QRILL chief policy officer Pal Skogrand described the trigger as a cautious threshold, not an alarm.
"Given that the 620,000 MT catch level triggering the closure represents just 11 percent of CCAMLR's Precautionary krill catch limit of 5.61 million MT for Area 48 - and less than one percent of the estimated krill biomass of 63 million MT in that area - this development is hardly the crisis some might suggest," he said. The ten vessels involved, he added, "have maintained use of fishing grounds spread up to 450 kilometers apart, and industry voluntary closures of 30 - 40 kilometer buffers around penguin breeding colonies have also been maintained."
Skogrand noted Aker has supported a 455,000-square-kilometre marine protected area over much of the Antarctic Peninsula, a plan vetoed at CCAMLR by China and Russia. "We want to develop this underutilized resource which Antarctic krill is," he said. "But we also want a win for conservation."
Sea Shepherd chief campaigns officer Peter Hammarstedt likens the biomass-percentage defence to a timber company boasting it fells one percent of the world's trees without mentioning that all of it is in the Amazon.
"Super trawlers dragging massive nets through the feeding grounds of whales, in pursuit of the very prey those whales depend upon, cannot credibly be described as sustainable," Hammarstedt said in March. "No label or certification claim can obscure the reality that these products are putting Antarctic whales at risk."
The fishery's sustainability certification is under formal attack from an unexpected direction. WWF, a founding partner of the Marine Stewardship Council, objected to the MSC recertifying the fishery this year and called for a moratorium.
"Antarctic krill are the powerhouse of the Southern Ocean, and mismanagement of the krill fishery is having a major negative impact on the species which depend on krill, such as whales," said Rhona Kent, polar oceans programme manager at WWF-UK, who sought "a review of the sustainability certification issued by the MSC until more precautionary fisheries management measures are agreed by CCAMLR."
The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition filed its own objection. "Our objection is about ensuring that the environmental impacts of the krill fishery have been accurately assessed," said executive director Claire Christian. "This case highlights a clear mismatch between the certification and the contemporary reality of the Antarctic krill fishery."
Independent assessor ASI has reportedly upheld several of the findings raised, with the certifier yet to respond.
Underneath all of it sits shaky data. The biomass estimates in circulation predate recent sea-ice decline. Sea Shepherd has put independent scientists aboard for the first time this season - Dr Matthew Savoca of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station and Dr Ted Cheeseman of UC Santa Cruz - running whale surveys, drone-measured distances between whales and trawlers, and photo identification.
"We think this zone around the South Orkney Islands may have the highest biomass of whales of anywhere on the planet," Cheeseman said.
The IUCN this year moved the emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal to Endangered, naming falling krill availability under climate change as a risk to the wider ecosystem.
Conservation groups head into October asking member states to bring back spatial limits, adopt ecosystem-based management and designate the Peninsula marine protected area.
