While 22 governments in the CCAMLR supported the plan for a new Antarctic Ocean sanctuary, Russia, China and Norway did not. Motives behind the stalled plan include overfishing, pollution and climate change.
Image: Imago/blickwinkel
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The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) has been meeting in Hobart, Australia over the last two weeks.
On Friday, the Commission's meeting broke up without an agreement for three new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) — in East Antarctica, in the Weddell Sea, and in the Western Antarctic Peninsula — which would have turned a huge area of ocean off the Antarctic into the world's largest sanctuary.
The 1.8 million square kilometer (roughly 695,000 square mile) area would be five times the size of Germany and offer protection to penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.
Plans are for the sanctuary to ring-fence the waters and restrict commercial fishing and other human activity. This would include any future attempt to mine the seabed or drill for oil.
A group of penguins in AntarcticaImage: picture-alliance/blickwinkel/A. Rose
A 37th meeting
No MPAs were designated at the Commission's 37th annual meeting: "Members will continue to work intersessionally on proposals for these MPAs before they are again considered at next year's meeting," the CCAMLR said its closing statement on Friday.
The Commission is made up of 24 countries plus the EU and is responsible for making decisions about the waters around Antarctica, the southernmost continent and site of the South Pole.
As each of the members has to agree before a new sanctuary can be designated, to protect against overfishing and pollution for example, a small minority of members can impede progress.
The fragile grandeur of the Antarctic
Our planet's southernmost continent may be far from civilization — but that doesn't mean it's untouched. On a voyage to Antarctica, photojournalist Alexandre Meneghini captured the landscape's vulnerable beauty.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
A stomach-churning voyage
Photojournalist Alexandre Meneghini knew the voyage to Antarctica might be a bumpy ride. But he refused to take motion sickness pills. "That was a mistake," he later admitted. At times, he felt like he was inside a centrifuge. Especially here, in the infamous Drake Passage — a body of water near Cape Horn where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans converge.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
Graceful travel companions
But Antarctica's stunning natural beauty makes the rough seas worth enduring. On this voyage organized by Greenpeace, whales surfaced near the research ship multiple times. More than a dozen species of whale spend at least part of the year in Antarctic waters, including the blue, Minke, humpback and sperm whale.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
Krill(ing) me softly
But Meneghini also saw more worrying activity on the horizon. This krill-fishing vessel was spotted in Crescent Bay. For a long time, krill was of little interest to humans. Now, they are being targeted by the fishing industry, which markets krill oil as a source of omega-3. That's a problem, according to Greenpeace, as almost all Antarctic animals in rely on krill as a staple food.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
A colony with a view
Meneghini's journey though the Antarctic featured some unforgettable moments, and encounters with penguins certainly ranked among them. Here, he came face-to-face with a colony of Gentoo penguins on Cuverville Island. Krill makes up the bulk of these birds' diet.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
Shore leave
Gentoo penguins waddle across an ice-free spot in Neko Harbor. Meneghini said getting so close to penguins on shore made him feel like a kid in a sweet shop. "If you don't move, the penguins will stay close by for hours," the photographer said.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
Sitting on a rock in the bay
A fur seal takes a break from the water in Maxwell Bay. Fur seals were hunted to close to extinction by the early 20th century. Since then, their numbers have recovered. Still, individual animals are at risk of getting entangled in shipping debris. And although they also feed on fish and even penguins, fur seals could come under pressure from krill fishing, conservationists warn.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
A global threat
Of course, Antractica wildlife isn't only threatened by fishing. Climate change is eroding the continent's glaciers faster than expected. That's disrupting local species' habitat — and threatens to force global sea levels up to the point where some worst-case scenarios see all the world's coastal cities wiped out before the end of this century.
Image: Reuters/A. Meneghini
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Environmentalists object
Environmentalists were quick to condemn the Commission for missing the opportunity to protect the area. "Twenty-two delegations came here to negotiate in good faith but, instead, serious scientific proposals for urgent marine protection were derailed by interventions which barely engaged with the science," said Frida Bengtsson of Greenpeace.
Scientists had said the sanctuary would be important in terms of tackling climate change as the Antarctic absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In 2011, the CCAMLR agreed to create a network of MPAs in the Southern Ocean by 2020. As 2018 draws to a close, only two have been designated.
The United Nations is to discuss a new global ocean treaty which would create new, protected areas covering a third of the world's oceans.
