What is CCAMLR and how can you help them protect the Antarctica’s waters? A short answer you get from the VIDEO of the Antarctic Oceans Alliance. The video timely comes out while the members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) meet in Hobart, Tasmania, these days, to discuss the establishment of marine protected areas. 

CCAMLR is an international commission composed of 25 members – 24 countries and the European Union – created in 1982 in response to increasing commercial fishing of Antarctic krill and other marine species. The commission meets annually to determine allowable use of marine resources in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean, including setting catch limits and harvest zones for krill in Antarctic waters.

The Antarctic Ocean Alliance and other conservation groups have proposed marine protected areas, amounting to more than five million square kilometers of Antarctic waters. Consensus among CCAMLR members is building, especially with signals from Russia that it may support the proposal.

Certainly helpful in this context were the outcomes of the recent IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawai’i, where a motion for Achieving representative systems of protected areas in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean was agreed by large majority of IUCN-members. And the initiative for Supporting Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean, which also LT&C-members supported, was certainly crucial to raise awareness about the importance of a positive decision of all the CCAMLR-members. Those of us joining coming November the LT&C-Study Tour to the region will learn more about this important campaign and whether it has then already achieved results…