ANU School of History Seminar Series - The Diplomacy of Krill

Seminar Room A, Coombs Building, ANU

The Diplomacy of Krill: negotiating the exploitation of Antarctic resources in the 1970s

Alessandro Antonello, School of History, ANU

In May 1980, after six years of discussions and negotiations, 15 states agreed to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a convention which created a structure of principles and institutions to provide for the conservation of the whole Southern Ocean ecosystem, to control its exploitation as a nascent and promising fishery, and to insist on the continuing centrality of the Antarctic Treaty and parties to that treaty in the management of Antarctic affairs.

This paper explores CCAMLR’s creation in the latter half of the 1970s, especially the ways in which diplomats and scientists conceptualised issues relating to understanding and exploiting the marine living resources of the Southern Ocean, especially the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba.

Alessandro Antonello is a PhD candidate in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU.