Environmental groups were left stunned and disappointed this week after their proposal to protect the last sea on Earth with a near-pristine ecosystem fell at the final hurdle.
The Ross Sea, south-west of New Zealand, is the southernmost body of water in the world, gouging a chunk out of Antarctica. This week, 24 governments and the European Union attended a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in Bremerhaven, Germany, to decide whether to turn it into a marine protected area. This would have banned fishing in the spawning areas of some species and put limits on the amount of fish caught elsewhere.
The deal needed unanimous agreement to pass so was derailed when Russia ? one of the countries that fishes in these waters ? voted against it, citing uncertainty about whether the commission had the legal authority to establish a marine protected area.
The Ross Sea is special because it is still dominated by the great hunters of the seas, rather than the plankton and invertebrates that make up most of the rest of the world's oceans. Whales, penguins, seals, carnivorous fish and other top predators tend to be only a tiny part of the system. In the Ross Sea, these big beasts reign supreme. As well as large populations of orcas, minke whales and hundreds of thousands of seals, it contains over a quarter of the world's Ad?lie and emperor penguins.
"[It's] an immense biomass of top predators? mind-boggling," says independent oceanographer David Ainley.
The Ross Sea is considered one of the most pristine ecosystems on the planet because humans had left it alone until relatively recently. This means it offers scientists "the last chance to understand how a healthy marine ecosystem functions", claims the Antarctic Ocean Alliance (AOA), a coalition of environment groups.
But they argue that it won't be this way for long if it's not protected. Since 1996, fishing fleets have been taking its most important predator fish, the Antarctic toothfish, which is sold around the world as Chilean sea bass. This harvest is already starting to alter the trophic structure of the Ross Sea, says Ainley.
The commission meeting voted on a proposal from the US and New Zealand to create a protected area covering 1.6 million square kilometres in and around the Ross Sea (see map). There was also a second proposal from the European Union, Australia and France to protect the coastal waters around East Antarctica. If either proposal had passed, it would have created the world's largest marine protected area.
"We are really disappointed about the result," says Steve Campbell at the AOA, who described the Russian objection as a "bizarre challenge" given the commission established a marine protected area around the nearby South Orkney Islands in 2009.
The AOA will now work to remove the "roadblock in Moscow" in time for the next commission meeting in Hobart, Australia, in October. "We think we can do it at the next meeting," he says.
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