China and Norway are working to expand the Southern Ocean krill fishery, promoting a new management system for the fishery and continuing to support their fleets politically and financially. Meanwhile, tensions are escalating between environmental NGOs and the fishing industry, as it targets a species at the heart of the food web in one of the planet’s most fragile ecosystems. “We hope we will be able to get the decisions we need now in October 2026,” Matts Johansen, CEO of Aker BioMarine, told Mongabay in April. The Norwegian company has been involved in the fishery for years as Norway’s only operator. In 2024, it spun off Aker QRILL, which now operates the Norwegian krill-fishing fleet and harvested 52% of the Southern Ocean krill catch in the 2025 season and 63% in 2024. The Norwegian delegation made a striking proposal at the last meeting of the multilateral body that manages fishing in the Southern Ocean, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), held in Hobart, Australia, in October 2025. Norway proposed moving away from a fixed catch-limit system and nearly doubling the amount of krill (Euphausia superba) that can be fished in the Southern Ocean. The 27 CCAMLR members did not reach the consensus necessary to approve the proposal. According to Johansen, as a consequence of this refusal, the Chinese delegation reiterated its veto on a proposal to establish a marine protected area around the western Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney Islands, in a zone called…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.