| Summary: | Since 1976 the Institute of Sea Fisheries of the Federal Research Center for Fisheries, Hamburg, has been conductinglong-term monitoring research on Antarctic krill in order to manage the stocks according to the precautionary approach. The krill stocks of the South Atlantic fluctuate seasonally as well as inter-annually in biomass and recruitment success. Following high densities in the late 1970s, the stocks are recently declining. Shortly after the onset of a commercial fishery the catches reached a maximum of around 500 000 t annually, but stabilized around 100 000 t during recent years. Actual survey results indicate mean krill densities in the South Atlantic of 21.4 g/m2, corresponding to 44 Mio. t. The potential yield and maximumcatch rate was set at 4.0 Mio. t per year subdivided for thevarious CCAMLR Subareas. CCAMLR is expected to introducefurther conservation measures to control the fishery in the convention area in the near future, however, there is still room for developing a krill fishery in the Antarctic. Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute, Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries began publishing the Informationen aus der Fischereiforschung = Information on Fishery research in 2010.
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