Rev. 1 Note: This revision corrects minor transcription errors in Table 1. These transcription errors were in relation to BANZARE Bank inside the Planning Domain. No changes to the text have been made.
This paper summarises the scientific background to the proposed East Antarctica Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (EARSMPA), including why the EARSMPA will contribute to the Commission achieving the objectives of CCAMLR in Article II, in both conservation and in science relevant to the Commission; the science underpinning the design of the EARSMPA; and why each MPA is important to the EARSMPA. It is a synthesis of previous submissions since 2010 to CCAMLR, SC-CAMLR and its working groups and workshops and utilises and refers to materials from the reports of the Scientific Committee since the first MPA workshop in 2005. This paper shows how the EARSMPA is designed to:
- efficiently achieve its general and specific objectives and provide increased certainty over meeting the requirements in Article II for all Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR), notwithstanding the specific conservation objectives to be achieved for harvesting indicated in Article II paragraphs 3(a,b);
- enable the acquisition of knowledge on status and trends in the Southern Ocean ecosystem in different areas in order to adjust fisheries and other activities to achieve sustained conservation of AMLR; and
- facilitate correct attribution of the cause of changes to harvested, dependent or related species, whether that be by harvesting, environmental change or some other factor, in order that the Commission may respond correctly and in a timely manner to observed changes.