Antarctic Treaty notes

CCAMLR's Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management meets in San Diego

Forty scientists representing 16 countries attended the third meeting of the Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management (WG-EMM) at Hubbs Sea World Research Institute in San Diego, California, in late July. The WG-EMM serves as the technical, scientific gathering in support of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Rennie Holt of the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hosted the meeting. Participants discussed

data on catch status and trends, harvested species, dependent species, and the environment;
harvested species, particularly krill--methods for estimating distribution and abundance as well as analysis of recruitment and production;
dependent species, such as birds and mammals, site protection review, methods for monitoring performance, status and trends, and performance indices;
the environment, assessment methods, and key variables;
ecosystem analysis, by-catch of fish in krill fishery, and interactions between ecosystem components; and
ecosystem assessment, estimates of potential yield, and precautionary catch limits.

Workshop participants hope that planned collaborations among CCAMLR nations will increase ecosystem research coverage in the Antarctic Peninsula region on both temporal and spatial scales. Contribution from the United States will include research by both the National Science Foundation and NOAA. A workshop to compare data sets collected in the Antarctic Peninsula area will be held in 1998 in the United States. The U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources program and the National Science Foundation will be represented at the workshop, as will Germany, the United Kingdom, Korea, and Japan. Integrating results collected by various nations in adjacent areas in a time series mode, scientists believe, will greatly enhance the present data.