The Southern Ocean Toothfish Fishery – conflicting evidence highlights uncertainty in fishery management.

• Main Author: Battaerd, Bjorn
• Language: English
• Published: University of Canterbury 2018
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10092/16119

The Southern Ocean toothfish fisheries, -managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)- are constantly examined for their sustainability and greater ecosystem impacts. Despite fish biology and ecosystem interactions having been investigated since the establishment of CCAMLR in 1982, the data produced is yet to allow scientists to draw comprehensive conclusions about the impact and true scale of the exploitation of fisheries or the trophic interactions of fish populations with marine mammals and the wider ecosystem. Although a vast amount of literature explains some of the life histories and biology, there is still not enough known about toothfish, specifically; juvenile toothfish survival rates, juvenile distributions, geographic influences, water circulation influences, migrations and movements, to allow us to understand the importance of this key species in the Antarctic ecosystem. This review highlights new research that identifies some of the unknowns about the fish biology, challenging CCAMLR’s views of a sustainable fishery. This review also identifies gaps in the literature that proves that the vast connection to the ecosystem cannot be fully understood with improved knowledge.