In 2010 CCAMLR established the CCAMLR Scientific Scholarship Scheme to assist early career scientists¹ to participate in the work of the Scientific Committee and its working groups.

The objective of the Scholarship Scheme is to contribute to capacity building within the CCAMLR scientific community in order to help generate and sustain a sound basis of scientific expertise able to support the requirements of CCAMLR in the long term.

Scholarships of up to A$30 000 are available to facilitate participation in CCAMLR Scientific Committee workshops or working group meetings, relevant preparatory meetings, and exceptionally, meetings of the Scientific Committee, over a period of two years. Scholarships are open to scientists from all CCAMLR Members. Preference will be given to early career scientists who have not previously, or routinely, participated in CCAMLR working groups and are actively seeking to contribute to important areas of science for CCAMLR.

Priority areas of research can be found in the Strategic Plan for the Scientific Committee and the workplans for the Scientific Committee working groups, available as annexes in the SC-CAMLR-41 report. Additional topics include:

• Research into krill population dynamics and ecosystem monitoring to support the development of feedback management in the krill fishery.
• The use of fishing vessels to collect acoustics data on the abundance and distribution of krill.
• Science to support the development of approaches to spatial management including marine protected areas.
• Integrated stock assessments for fisheries in areas without such assessments.
• Methods for toothfish biomass estimation and stock assessment where mark-recapture programs are not feasible.
• Models to assess the spatial overlap of longline fisheries and the distribution of tagged fish.
• The impacts of depredation by toothed whales on the assessments in toothfish fisheries.
• Analysis and development of models to evaluate management strategies related to Article II of the CAMLR Convention and CCAMLR's harvest decision rules.
• Conduct analyses to improve the quantity,  quality and usability of historic toothfish and skate tagging data.

Making an application

Each application to the Scholarship Scheme must have the support of the Scientific Committee representative of the relevant CCAMLR Member. Please contact your Scientific Committee representative as an essential first step.

Another key element of the CCAMLR Scholarship Scheme is that each recipient of a scholarship has a ‘Mentor’ who is familiar with the work processes and procedures of CCAMLR and its working groups. Finding a suitable Mentor is a key part of any Scholarship application. A Mentor does not have to be from the same Member as the applicant. In some situations where it may be difficult to find a suitable Mentor, the conveners of the working groups and the Vice-Chairs of the Scientific Committee can help by identifying a suitable Mentor based on the areas of science proposed in the application.

Completed application forms must be submitted to by 31 August.

Proposals will be reviewed by the Scholarship Review Panel (led by the Senior Vice-Chair of the Scientific Committee) using the following criteria:

• scientific and other qualifications of the candidate
• relevance to the work priorities and work plan of the Scientific Committee and the extent to which it will strengthen the scientific capacity and engagement in the work of the Scientific Committee of the applying Member
• strength of the linkages between the applicant and mentor scientist(s)
• justification for the budget requested.

Applications or questions can be submitted to science_scholarship [at] ccamlr [dot] org.

View a list of previous recipients of CCAMLR Scientific Scholarship Scheme

¹For the purposes of the CCAMLR Scholarship Scheme an early career scientist eligible for consideration for the scholarship scheme is defined as a post-graduate scientist who is actively engaged in relevant research.