(Corrects the name of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition as well as to accurately reflect its relationship with the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project)

Governments and their related organisations are not doing enough to protect marine life at the southern end of the planet and must resolve long-standing issues around three crucial areas in the region, scientists and environmentalists said as governments on Monday gathered in Hobart, Australia for two weeks of negotiations on Antarctic marine living resources.

A coterie of marine scientists and environmental groups are calling on the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to live up to its name and get moving on protecting vast swathes of the Southern Ocean.

“CCAMLR is increasingly coming under the international spotlight for its poor track record on conservation, with the last significant action taken in 2016 with the agreement of the Ross Sea MPA,” a statement from the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a group that includes Greenpeace, the WWF, and the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project, said Monday.

The Commission was established to protect the Southern Ocean’s biodiversity. It has 27 member states, including the EU and eight of its member nations.

Its mandate includes fisheries management, the protection of Antarctic nature, and the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs), which are designed to help Antarctic areas protect themselves against climate change.

Specifically CCAMLR wants to see the establishment of three more MPAs across several million square kilometres of ocean surrounding the icy continent, however two member nations – China and Russia – held out at the last meeting in Chilean capital Santiago in June, as they have done in previous meetings.

The establishment of MPAs began in 2009 in the Southern Ocean and the first high seas MPA was on the southern shelf of the South Orkney Islands.

Members agreed to the world’s largest MPA in 2016 of two million square kilometres in the Ross Sea, but work has since frozen.

The EU has two areas it proposes for MPA status in the East Antarctic of 950,000 sq.km. It is backed by Australia, Norway, Uruguay, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, India, South Korea, and Ukraine.

It also proposes the Weddell Sea across an area of 2.18 million sq.km.

The Antarctic Peninsula stretching between Argentina and Chile is the third and would be 650,000 sq.km.

“That is roughly the size of the EU and represents 1% of the global ocean. Together this would secure the largest act of ocean protection in history,” the group said Monday.

They noted record low levels of sea ice coupled with record high temperatures and the deaths of 9,000 Emperor Penguin chicks over the most recent breeding season, although they were clear the establishment of more MPAs will not avert climate change but rather provide resilience to the ecosystem.

“It is time for CCAMLR to break the impasse and make good on its overdue promise to create a network of MPAs in Antarctica,” director of Antarctic and Southern Ocean conservation work for The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project Andrea Kavanagh said.

Other issues of importance include krill fishing management, called the ‘lynchpin’ of the Antarctic ecosystem which also plays an important role in the global carbon cycle as a major carbon sink.

“Highly concentrated krill fishing in the region, coupled with runaway climate change, are putting krill under threat, and in turn wildlife and essential ecosystems services. The balance between conservation and fishing needs to be urgently reset,” Antarctic Conservation Manager for WWF Emily Grilly said.

By Helen Clark – helen@carbon-pulse.com