Biomass estimates of Antarctic krill based on survey conducted by the Chinese fishing vessel FV Fu Rong Hai during the 2019 Area 48 survey

As a contribution to the joint effort on the large-scale international synoptic krill survey of Area 48 (2019 Area 48 survey), the Chinese krill fishing vessel F/V Fu Rong Hai conducted the acoustic survey around the South Shetland Islands and the Elephant Islands in the Subarea 48.1 from 5^th to 10^th February 2019. Implementation and preliminary results on the estimates of krill biomass density were presented to the WG-EMM 2019 meeting. After the meeting, the acoustic data were processed further using the swarm-based method to identify krill backscatter as recommended by CCAMLR. Updated analysis shown that mean krill biomass density was 80.7 g m^-2 with a CV of 13.6% in the survey area. However, the krill biomass estimates might be updated pending on the outcome of krill length clustering analysis and discussion on the methodology during this SG-ASAM meeting.