The historic pattern of Antarctic marine living resources exploitation – pulses of intensive fishing of a species, followed by its depletion and then a switch to other species – fuelled concerns on the harvesting of krill as far back as the mid-1970s. The overriding fear was that not only would recently protected whale populations fail to recover, but that other species dependent on the krill food chain would be affected by its harvesting.

Taking account of these concerns, the 1977 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting commenced a series of international negotiations which resulted in the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources (CCAMLR) being signed in 1980. The Convention entered into force in 1982 and its Secretariat is located in Hobart (Tasmania, Australia).

All Parties to CCAMLR are entitled to be Members of the Commission which oversees the implementation of the Convention. The Commission sets policy on, and regulates, activities associated with the rational utilisation and management of marine living resources in the Southern Ocean. It receives advice from its Scientific Committee (SC-CAMLR), which in turn bases this on assessments undertaken by its Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management (WG-EMM) and the Working Group on Fish Stock Assessment (WG-FSA).

The Commission currently has 23 Members. In common with other international agreements it does not impose regulations, but rather negotiates to reach agreement on issues which the Members are then obligated to implement and enforce. Until recently, all nations fishing in the Convention Area have been either Members or have acceded to the Convention (i.e. have accepted its tenets). However, non-Members have recently entered the toothfish (Dissostichus spp.) fishery and this has compounded CCAMLR’s efforts to combat IUU fishing in the Convention Area. As a consequence, IUU fishing is now seen as one of the major challenges facing CCAMLR.