Results from the 2019 annual acoustic krill monitoring off the South Orkney Islands

In 2019, the annual IMR regional krill monitoring survey off the South Orkneys was conducted by RV Kronprins Haakon as part of the Scotia Sea large scale krill monitoring effort. To allow for comparison with previous survey years and provide some context for the large scale survey estimate, we here present the results from the 2019 regional survey processed and analysed in the same way as the annual surveys from 2011 to 2018. The distribution was similar to previous years with most krill along the shelf edge north of the Islands. Also the krill areal density measured on the 120 kHz of 69.87 g/m² was very close to the long term average. Sampling variance, however, expressed as coefficient of variation was the second lowest on record, indicating a less patchy krill distribution than a typical year.