Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), founded in 1982, serves as the primary international authority for protecting Southern Ocean marine life. It adopts an ecosystem-based approach to balance sustainable harvesting with biodiversity protection across a vast Convention Area covering about 10 percent of the world’s oceans. Its structure includes a consensus-driven Commission, a science advisory committee, and Hobart-based Secretariat. The 27 member States and 10 acceding countries implement and fund conservation measures, supported by compliance monitoring, research programs, and capacity-building initiatives to uphold its environmental mandate.