Future work of the Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management and implications for the format of its meetings

CCAMLR’s Working Group on Ecosystem Monitoring and Management wasestablished to provide management advice to the Scientific Committee based on anecosystem assessment. Currently, management advice is provided by a yield model,which assumes a freely distributed krill population, homogeneously distributed predationpressure and randomly determined recruitment. The effects of uncertainty with regard toinput parameters are included, but spatial and temporal trends in krill demographics,predator demand and fishing pressure are not. However, WG-EMM also maintains amonitoring program that could provide some of the information necessary to implement amore robust ecosystem approach to management. A strategic plan for assembling thesecomponents was developed at the first meeting of WG-EMM and considerable progresshas been made on a number of contributing initiatives. WG-EMM currently considers awide range of information in order to derive a qualitative description of the status of theecosystem and appropriate management actions. A full management scheme – whichwould 1) consider quantitative information from the fishery, harvested species, dependentspecies and the environment; 2) invoke a set of management decision rules based on thisinformation; and 3) determine the likely effects of management actions given theuncertainty in the information – has yet to be completely developed. Recent discussionsat WG-EMM regarding its future work and the implications for the format and venue ofits meeting are reviewed. It is recommended that the development of an integratedmanagement scheme for krill fisheries can be best achieved by involving a wide range ofexperts both from within and outside of the CCAMLR community, and that this may bebest accomplished by changing the format of the meetings and maintaining a movingvenue. Implications of these recommendations are briefly considered.