Guarding the Sea Nobody Owns, Where the Krill Live

Antarctic krill are the hinge of the Southern Ocean: whales, penguins, seals and seabirds all run on them, and the fishery for them is concentrating rather than spreading, with Norway, South Korea, Chile, China and Ukraine accounting for the entire catch in the CCAMLR area as of 2025. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition has worked this problem since 1978 and is now more than 20 organisations across 15 countries, holding the line at the annual CCAMLR meetings where Antarctic decisions require consensus and any one member can block. Its case built the South Orkney Islands MPA in 2009 — the first marine protected area on the high seas anywhere — and the Ross Sea MPA in 2016, the largest in the world at the time. No new Antarctic MPA has been agreed since, which is why proposals for the Antarctic Peninsula, the Weddell Sea and East Antarctica are still live campaigns rather than history.