This document discusses how climate change is impacting the Antarctic region and CCAMLR's potential role in monitoring and responding to these changes. It outlines that warming temperatures and ocean acidification pose risks to Antarctic fisheries and ecosystems. The document then discusses Norway's Antarctic research focus on krill and ice sheets. It notes the unpredictability of climate impacts, such as rapid ice sheet collapse, and uncertainties around how climate change could impact krill populations and alter the Antarctic ecosystem. The document argues that CCAMLR could play a more proactive role in climate monitoring by utilizing its fishing fleets to collect environmental data and establishing monitoring programs within marine protected areas. This would help address knowledge gaps and strengthen the scientific basis for CCA

1. Climate Change: The role
CCAMLR can play and
projections and CCAMLR
response options
Contribution by Norway
Olav Rune Godø

2. My talk
• Climate change in general– UN climate
panel etc
• Norwegian ambitions (Plan 2012-2022)
• Experience in north
• Climate change in Antarctic
• Harvest and management under
climate change
• CCAMLR’s role
• How can it be pursued

3. UN – climate panel
• Warming temperatures, and declining pH
and carbonate ion concentrations,
represent risks to the productivity of
fisheries and aquaculture
• no long-term trend in large-scale currents
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
(AMOC), IndonesianThroughflow (ITF),
the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC),
or the transport of water between the
Atlantic Ocean and Nordic Seas

4. UN – climate panel (cont)
• pH impact on calcification organisms
• Rapid changes within ocean sub-
regions have already affected
distribution and abundance
• Local stressors (pollution and other
human impacts) combined with climate
change bad mixture
• Changes to ocean generating new
challenges for fisheries, as well as
benefits (high agreement).

5. Norwegian research effort in
Antarctica 2013-2022
Norway has responsibility
and competence within
particularly two areas:
• Knowledge on krill-based
ecosystems
• Knowledge building on
changes in ice mass –
how it interact with the
ocean

6. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

7. MORE H+
AND MORE CO2
***MORE BICARBONATE***

9. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

12. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

14. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

15. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

16. Ch30, Hoegh-Guldberg et. al (2014)

17. Northern experience
Sundby and Nakken 2008
Kjesbu et al. 2014

18. Cod resist climate change
• Exotic fish species appears under
climate warming
• Stay for relatively short time
• Cod maintained its role as a major
target species independent of
climate
Enghoff et al. 2007

19. Unpredictability
sheet break down at Larsen B during few weeks

20. West Antarctic - melting
Warm deepwater
penetrates under the ice
shelf and cases increased
melting from beneath in
west Antarctic

21. East-Antarctica and Dronning
Maud Land
• Exceptionally high snowfall in DML compensating for the mass
loss from West Antarctic
• Natural variation or climate change?
• Is monitored by satellite, radar, ice cores and meteorology

22. Krill

23. Antarctic - krill
• Atkinson et al.2004
• Climate impact
major ecosystem
components and
function
• Are salps replacing
krill under global
warming?

24. The Southern Ocean – a modified
ecosystem
• Two centuries of human modification: Whaling, sealing,
fishing pressure
• Commercial exploitation of krill-dependent species and
subsequent biomass removal:
– Antarctic fur seals ~200 000 tonnes
– Whales ~37.4 million tonnes
– Finfish ~unknown
• Prey biomass ’release’ ~154 million tonnes per year – mostly
by whales
• Additional krill utilized by other predators (penguins not
harvested?)
• Post-harvest recovery of whales > increased competition >
decreased penguin population
”Krill surplus hypothesis”

25. “Climate-induced habitat
modification Hypothesis”
• 2010 –2013 : 160 billion tonnes (bt) of ice
loss (McMillan et al. (2014). GeophysRes
Lett. DOI 10.1002/2014GL060111)
– 31% increase on 2005 –2011
– Asymmetrical loss –West Antarctica (134bt),
East Antarctica (3bt), WAP (23bt)
– Heterogeneous circumpolar loss of krill
breeding habitat –a ‘real’ loss in absolute krill
abundance ?

26. Variability
• Predicting future scenarios, however, is
complicated by an intense 55 inter-
annual variability in recruitment success
and krill abundance (Flores et al. 2012)
• critical knowledge gaps need to be filled
– the factors influencing recruitment
– the resilience and the genetic plasticity of
krill life stages
(Flores et al. 2012)

27. No question – these issues will
impact CCAMLR!
• Are CCAMLR able to handle changes?
• Is applying the precautionary principle
the only viable way to go?
• Can CCAMLR play a more proactive
role?
– Remove knowledge gaps
– Support environmental and ecological
monitoring?

28. The proactive role
• CCAMLR manage fisheries
• Organise research
• Regulate research fishing proposed by
members
• These are all contributions to
sustainability
• But are they adequate/proactive efforts
towards future challengers posed by
climate change?

29. ”Expect the unexpected!”
• This is Bill Ricker’s advise
• CCAMLR need to prepare for it
• With CCAMLR’s ecosystem focus,
management may run into problems
when not knowing
• Can CCAMLR’s operational capacity be
utilized more actively to support
knowledge on climate change?
• Can CCAMLR do something? Yes we
can!

30. CCAMLR has an impressive
sleeping operational capacity
• A large fleet of longliners and trawlers
operate all over Antarctic
• Their capacity to collect data is
underutilized
• Can also be used to operate moorings,
drifters and other equipment
• Enhance coverage in time and space

31. Use MPAs to support
knowledge and data
• Introduction of MPAs have met
substantial debate and resistance
• They could become important
instruments in support of our knowledge
base
• Requires rethinking of the operational
strategy of the MPA

32. How?
• Advances in technology may transform
fishing vessels to research vessel
collecting physical, biological and
chemical data
• Running acoustics on krill trawlers is a
good example of hat can be achieved
• Automatic loggers with a variety of
sensors can be attached to trawls and
longlines profiling the whole water column
• Hull mounted sensors may log surface
and weather condition

33. Reporting
• Small data sets by satellite directly to
land base
• Larger data sets are transferred when
Ethernet is available

34. Utilising SOOS
• Cooperation with SOOS to organise
data might give a CCAMLR an
important data collection role
• And Antarctic a more complete
monitoring database
• CCAMLR efforts can limit the negative
impacts of time – space gaps in present
data.
http://www.soos.aq/

35. Enhancing legitimacy of
CCAMLR fisheries regulation
• Involving stakeholders creates
understanding
– Informing
– utilizing
• Supporting the knowledgebase and
• Strengthen the monitoring basis for
adequate regulation

36. Organisational implications?
• Probably
– SC might need restructuring
– Tighter interaction between commission
and SC might be required
– CCAMLR better integrated with other
Antarctic science and management
organisations
• But CCAMLR as a consensus
organisation is needed and will prevail

37. Acknowledgement
• Svein Sundby, IMR, Bergen
• Kit Kovacs, NPI, Tromsø
• Howard Browman, IMR, Bergen