| Summary: | This chapter investigates how the marine ecosystem came to be the central object of conservation in the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources of 1980. This was a novel move in international law, because the protection of an entire ecosystem had never before been enshrined in a treaty. In the 1960s the Soviet Union began to investigate the potential of krill and other fisheries in the Antarctic. This worried other treaty parties and environmentalists because over-exploitation of krill would have flow-on effects on its predators. While the Soviet Union, joined by Japan and others, was resolutely pro-exploitation, other nations, led by the United States and Britain, were more pro-conservation, particularly focusing on protecting the ecosystem as a whole. The eventual codification of ecosystem protection demonstrated the power of the pro-conservation states at that time.
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