The 44th meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) concluded on Friday with no progress on two contentious issues before it: the creation of new marine protected areas and the strengthening of regulations governing the fishery for krill, a species on which numerous iconic species of Antarctic wildlife depend. CCAMLR has considered proposals to establish three large MPAs annually for years but again has failed to pass them under its consensus-based decision-making process, due to vetoes of MPA by Russia and China. Max Bello, Blue Marine Foundation’s Global MPA Specialist, attended the meeting and told Mongabay: “We’re extremely worried and extremely disappointed. The ‘conservation’ word is fading out of the convention now and more and more we see these sorts of proposals and push to continue increasing the impact in the fishing, particularly of krill.”
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