Acoustic surveys for Antarctic krill are typically undertaken from research vessels to assess local and regional biomass. However, the CCAMLR scientific community has been testing and using autonomous platforms to study aspects of krill behaviour, distribution and contribution to ecosystem function in the Southern Ocean and have used them to estimate krill biomass density in some areas. Here we provide an overview on the recent use of echosounders deployed on autonomous platforms to gain greater insight into krill distribution and behaviour throughout the Southern Ocean. We anticipate that this paper will encourage discussion at WG-ASAM-2025 on use of autonomous platforms broadly and in relation to the WG-ASAM work plan item 2 (b) (i) (1) with the aims of
- sharing insight on the strengths and weakness of platforms in use,
- highlighting priority topics and locations of future research that we can address using autonomous platforms,
- identifying opportunities for collaboration.