Antarctic krill fishery management dispute resurfaces: NGO says Aker BioMarine marketing cites outdated rating as CCAMLR annual meeting nears close

On October 28, 2026, as the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Hobart, Australia, neared its close, disagreements over Antarctic krill fishing heated up again outside the venue. The US-based NGO Antarctic Wildlife Alliance called for stricter limits on Antarctic krill fishing and accused Aker BioMarine of using misleading and outdated scientific statements in its marketing materials.

Antarctic Wildlife Alliance Executive Director Ally Kristan told SeafoodSource that the industry is using outdated and inaccurate metrics to promote its products, misleading those who invest in and buy them. She specifically pointed to Aker BioMarine's 2025 annual report and the section of the company's website detailing its certifications, saying Aker continues to use the "A" rating from the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) public sustainability assessment tool FishSource in marketing materials and online advertising "even though the rating dates from 2016." Kristan said that since 2021, SFP has significantly downgraded the score and currently considers the fishery "data-deficient" due to insufficient research, citing as an example that no acoustic surveys have been conducted since 2019. She said the Antarctic krill fishery faces enormous environmental and scientific concerns, with the harvest trigger limit reached early for two consecutive years and the concentration of fishing grounds increasing, and that such concerns will only grow.

Pål Skogrand, Chief Policy Officer of Aker QRILL Company, a subsidiary of Aker BioMarine, disputed the claims. According to him, Aker QRILL Company was the single largest company by volume of Antarctic krill harvested in 2025. Skogrand said FishSource explicitly states that it does not itself determine whether a fishery is sustainable, and that "data-deficient" does not mean the resource is depleted or unsustainable, but rather that under FishSource's methodology some indicators lack sufficient information to score; this is quite different from saying there is insufficient scientific knowledge about the resource, and may also reflect that information exists but is not publicly accessible, or that the assessment framework has limitations. He said this is precisely where the NGO oversteps. Skogrand cited survey data from 2000 and 2019, saying the two surveys produced estimates of 60.3 million tonnes and 62.6 million tonnes respectively, "highly consistent results" supporting the assumption that the large-scale biomass is relatively stable. He also said FishSource noted concerns about localized fishing pressure and the need for more refined management, and that the company fully recognizes these challenges and is actively addressing them; FishSource found no evidence that the resource is approaching the precautionary limit threshold and confirmed that the exploitation rate remains very low, concluding that under CCAMLR's current harvest control rule, the resource status is expected to remain precautionary.

David Martin, SFP's Global Supply Chain Director, told SeafoodSource that the tool does flag some concerns in the region, and that developments in the fishery over the past few years have led to a decline in key FishSource scores and raised concerns about how the fishery is managed. Martin said no reliable independent fishery surveys have been conducted since 2019, a period now well beyond one generation time for Antarctic krill, and that in the absence of such surveys there is high uncertainty about current biomass and exploitation rates. Martin specifically flagged the lapse of a key CCAMLR conservation tool as concerning. In 2024, conservation measure 51-07 (CM 51-07), introduced in 2009 as an interim spatial management measure, expired. Since then, the total catch has been capped at a trigger level of 620,000 tonnes, subdivided among subareas 48.1 to 48.4 to spread fishing effort and reduce overlap with predator foraging areas. Martin said that in the two fishing seasons since, fishing companies reached the 620,000-tonne trigger level months before the season ended, partly by concentrating effort where the most Antarctic krill can be caught. Martin said CM 51-07 had been extended several times while a more refined management system was developed, but lapsed in 2024 due to lack of consensus, removing spatial restrictions and concentrating fishing in key hotspot areas, especially subarea 48.1; the loss of CM 51-07 means there is a major gap in the current management framework, with growing concerns about the spatial concentration of fishing effort and the potential for localized depletion, especially in areas of high predator demand; the loss of the spatial management trigger may have contributed to the fishery closing early in the past two seasons after the quota trigger level was reached.

To defend the fishery's sustainability, Skogrand also cited the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) 2026 reassessment of the Antarctic krill fishery. He said the latest public MSC documents recommend recertification after extensive scientific review, and that the process is in its absolute final stage after the objection process.

Claire Christian, Executive Director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), countered that MSC certification is "really not relevant" in the context of CCAMLR discussions. She said CCAMLR has a very specific set of standards that fisheries should meet, and ASOC believes the current management of the Antarctic krill fishery does not meet them; in the past two fishing seasons, the fishery has concentrated in relatively small areas that are also foraging hotspots for Antarctic krill predators, increasing the risk of localized depletion, i.e., that there may not be enough Antarctic krill in that area for predators to eat; CCAMLR should have avoided this, so measures are needed to implement a new management measure that has been discussed for years, and a marine protected area also needs to be designated in the Antarctic Peninsula region to ensure effective protection of the ecosystem there.

Christian explained that as this year's CCAMLR annual meeting convened, the Commission has for years expressed its intention to implement a new Antarctic krill fishery management system, which involves spreading fishing over a larger area, dividing it into smaller management units, and equipping it with a management system capable of detecting changes in the ecosystem or Antarctic krill populations so that catch limits can be adjusted accordingly. Skogrand said his company is also open to reform of Antarctic krill fishery management, saying the question of how fishing should be distributed spatially has plagued CCAMLR for years and that the company strongly supports management modernization.

As the meeting nears its close, industry appetite to enter the Antarctic krill market continues to heat up rapidly. Recently, a 140-meter vessel named "Yong Li One" departed from the eastern Chinese port of Ningbo; the vessel is described as China's first independently developed Antarctic krill fishing and processing vessel.