Cool facts

The provisions of the present Treaty apply to areas south of 60° South Latitude, including all ice shelves. Decisions about the marine areas come primarily under the purview of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, entry into force 1982). CCAMLR is part of the Antarctic Treaty System and meets annually in Hobart to set the regulatory framework for the conservation of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, including through fisheries management. The Commission is made up of 25 Member States, and operates on the basis of consensus. Commission meetings are held in parallel with the meeting of the Scientific Committee, and preceded by meetings of its subsidiary Working Groups on Fish Stock Assessment and Incidental Mortality Associated with Fishing.

A UK proposal to designate the world’s first high seas marine protected area (MPA) was successful at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) meeting held in Tasmania in October 2009.

The MPA for the South Orkneys is just under 94,000 square kilometers, which is more than 4 times the size of Wales. No fishing activities and no discharge or garbage disposal from fishing vessels will be allowed in the area, which will allow scientists to better monitor the effects of human activities and climate change on the Southern Ocean. It is the world’s first internationally agreed high seas marine protected area. The MPA includes important sections of an oceanographic feature known as the Weddell Front, which marks the northern limit of waters characteristic of the Weddell Sea and the southern limit of the Weddell Scotia Confluence. The Weddell Scotia Confluence is a key habitat for Antarctic krill, one of the main species harvested in the Antarctic and a key focus for CCAMLR. The MPA also includes important foraging areas for Adélie penguins that breed at the South Orkney Islands, and important submarine shelf areas and seamounts, including areas that have recently been shown to have high biodiversity.

It is hoped that the South Orkneys MPA will be the first link in a network that will better conserve marine biodiversity in the Antarctic. It will help conserve important ecosystem processes, vulnerable areas, and create reference sites that can be used to make scientific comparisons between fished areas and no-take areas. Such networks will become increasingly important as climate change impacts become increasingly evident in the future.

The meeting also adopted a UK-drafted Climate Change Resolution, which urged increased consideration of climate change impacts in the Southern Ocean to better inform CCAMLR management measures.