As delegates gather in Hobart for the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the international body responsible for overseeing fisheries in the Southern Ocean, a critical gap remains in the management of Antarctica's increasingly controversial krill fishery.

Whales are conspicuously absent from the Commission's ecosystem monitoring program.

While CCAMLR monitors penguins, seabirds and fur seals to understand how krill availability affects their survival, it has yet to extend that monitoring to whales, even as industrial supertrawlers operate in some of the most important whale feeding grounds in the world.

For the past four years, Sea Shepherd has documented industrial supertrawlers weaving through enormous feeding aggregations of fin and humpback whales, among the largest concentrations of great whales observed since the international moratorium on commercial whaling came into force in 1986.

The Whales CCAMLR Forgot 

The origins of CCAMLR's blind spot lie in its establishment in 1982, when decades of industrial whaling had reduced Southern Hemisphere populations of fin and humpback whales by more than 94%, leaving the waters surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands largely devoid of great whales.

There was virtually no conflict between fishing vessels and whales to mitigate, because there were hardly any whales left.

Although the international moratorium on commercial whaling came into force in 1986, whaling continued in Antarctic waters until the International Court of Justice ruled against Japan's Antarctic whaling program in 2014, following years of efforts by Sea Shepherd to protect the whales of Antarctica.

Since then, great whales have been returning to Antarctic waters, but the framework established to manage the krill fishery has yet to account fully for their recovery. An expanding industrial fishing fleet and growing populations of hungry whales now compete for the same prey: Antarctic krill.

A Growing Competition for Krill 

A seven-year-old survey of CCAMLR Area 48, encompassing the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands, estimated krill biomass at 63 million tonnes, a figure that continues to underpin the catch limit. Yet research published in Nature Communications estimates that before industrial whaling, blue, fin and humpback whales in this same region may have consumed as much as 90 million tonnes of krill annually.

With climate change, declining sea ice and industrial fishing placing increasing pressure on krill populations, the Southwest Atlantic may no longer contain enough krill to sustain whale populations at their pre-whaling abundance, potentially constraining their recovery. And yet, at this year's CCAMLR meeting, Norway, Russia and the People's Republic of China are expected to push for a near doubling of the catch limit.

Giving Whales a Seat at the Table 

Since whales have no seat at the table in CCAMLR's ecosystem monitoring program, Sea Shepherd has stopped waiting for an invitation, choosing instead to pull up a chair and plop a whale into it.

To do that, last year we invited independent scientists led by Drs. Matthew Savoca and Ted Cheeseman aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel Allankay to conduct the first multiweek, fisheries-independent scientific assessment of whale populations and their overlap with industrial krill fishing around the South Orkney Islands.

The researchers documented extraordinary concentrations of humpback and fin whales in a region where research has estimated that more than 10,000 baleen whales congregate to feed. The greatest concentrations occurred in the very waters where industrial krill fishing is most intense.

Following just the first year of research, a proposal is now under consideration to incorporate humpback whales into CCAMLR's Ecosystem Monitoring Program (CEMP), making them the first cetacean species included. This would represent a historic shift, formally recognizing the recovery of great whales and their growing demand for krill within the scientific framework used to manage the fishery.

Monitoring Must Lead to Action 

But inclusion alone will not be enough. Decades of monitoring penguins and fur seals have demonstrated the value of tracking krill-dependent predators, yet that knowledge has rarely translated into binding restrictions on the fishery. Antarctic fur seals, monitored by CCAMLR for decades, were reclassified as Endangered by the IUCN in April 2026, following a population decline of more than 50%, driven largely by reduced krill availability.

Without robust scientific evidence, the krill fishing industry can dismiss conservationists' concerns as speculation. But when that evidence exists, it must carry consequences for how the fishery is managed. Otherwise, ecosystem monitoring risks becoming little more than an exercise in documenting ecological decline.

Turning Science into Change 

That is why Sea Shepherd will continue sending ships to Antarctica, supporting independent science while exposing the realities of industrial krill fishing to a global audience. By bringing journalists and filmmakers aboard, including the Silverback Films team behind David Attenborough's Ocean, we are making a camera-shy industry visible to millions.

Scientific evidence, storytelling and targeted advocacy have already helped persuade major retailers to stop selling krill oil supplements, demonstrating how public scrutiny can drive change.

Our objective is not simply to give whales a seat at CCAMLR's table, but to ensure that their presence changes the decisions made around it. It would be a profound failure of conservation if, having brought great whales back from the brink of extinction, we now allowed their recovery to be jeopardized by the industrial extraction of the very food they depend upon.

Learn more about Sea Shepherd’s Antarctic Defense Campaign: https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/our-campaigns/antarctica-defense/

** Images obtained under UCSC Friedlaender lab NMFS permit 27911 **