On Monday, 21 October 2019, the members of the CCAMLR Scientific Committee will meet in Hobart (Tasmania), and the Commission as a whole will meet from 29 October to 2 November 2019.

One of the main topics considered will be the proposal to create a Marine Protected Area in the Weddell Sea, the Atlantic sector of the Antarctic Ocean. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) will be among those present to support the application. The time between last year’s and this year’s meeting was used to address other countries’ concerns, which e.g. led Norway to join the EU and its Member States as a new supporter.  

“In all likelihood, it will take further political discussions to arrive at unanimous approval for a Weddell Sea MPA and additional proposals for MPAs (in East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula) at the CCAMLR,” explains Dr Stefan Hain, the Environmental Policy Speaker for the Alfred Wegener Institute, with regard to the upcoming negotiations.

Background:

The United Nations has the declared goal of protecting ten percent of the world’s oceans by 2020. To date, slightly less than eight percent has received protected status (UNEP database: https://www.protectedplanet.net/marine). The ultimate goal is to establish several Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) throughout the Antarctic. In this way, several regions could be set aside as sanctuaries for cold-loving marine organisms that, in the course of global warming and accompanying loss of sea-ice cover, will likely face increased pressure from the fishing industry in the future.

Since the founding of the AWI in 1980, its researchers have engaged in research expeditions to the Weddell Sea on a regular basis. Accordingly, the Commission invited Germany to prepare a proposal for a marine protected area in the Weddell Sea (WSMPA), a task that the Alfred Wegener Institute accepted on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In 2013, AWI researchers began gathering and analysing data, and preparing the WSMPA application, which the European Union submitted to the CCAMLR in 2016.

Whether or not the proposal will pass is first and foremost a matter of political will and international politics. In terms of the time scale, in 2016 the CCAMLR established a large MPA in the Antarctic Ross Sea, after nearly ten years of negotiations.