Every cast you make depends on a paperclip-sized creature 10,000 miles away.

Every cast you make depends on a paperclip-sized creature 10,000 miles away.

Every cast you make depends on a paperclip-sized creature 10,000 miles away. When you’re standing on a riverbank or rocking in a boat waiting for that first hit, you’re connected to the Southern Ocean in ways you probably never imagined. Antarctic krill, small shrimp-like marine crustaceans with the scientific name Euphausia superba, seem unremarkable at first glance. They feed on plankton and grow to about the size of a paperclip. But in the Antarctic, they are everything. And because the ocean is connected, what happens there eventually reaches your local waters.

The word “krill” comes from the Norwegian “kril,” meaning the small fry of fish. But there’s nothing small about their importance. Penguins, whales, seals, all depend on them as their primary food source. Remove the krill, and the entire ecosystem collapses. Those same whales that migrate thousands of miles, showing up in your favorite coastal spots during certain seasons, fill their bellies in Antarctic waters. If the krill disappear, the whales disappear. And the whole system shifts.

These tiny creatures play a crucial role in regulating the global climate by storing carbon. One study found that krill can remove up to 12 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year, a staggering amount for such small animals. They achieve this by feeding on carbon-rich plankton near the surface, then excreting it in fecal pellets that sink to the deep ocean, locking carbon away for centuries. Healthy oceans mean healthy fisheries. And krill are central to ocean health.

Despite their ecological importance, industrial trawlers hauled approximately 500,000 tonnes of krill from Antarctic waters last year. Norway dominated the catch, taking 67.2% of the total. China followed with 17.1%, South Korea with 8.4%, Chile with 4.4%, and Ukraine with 2.8%. The krill are processed into products far removed from their Antarctic origins: food for pets and farmed fish, and omega-3 dietary supplements sold in health food stores worldwide. The fish you catch might have been raised on feed made from Antarctic krill. The supplements you take to stay healthy come from the same source. We’re all connected to this tiny creature.

The scale of fishing has reached a critical point. A recent study by Norwegian and German scientists used acoustic recordings to track krill swarms and found that fishing vessels and Antarctic predators target the same aggregations. There is no point in the year when fishing operations do not overlap with marine life feeding. In other words, the trawlers are competing directly with penguins, whales, and seals for the same food. Every tonne they take is a tonne that doesn’t get eaten by the animals that depend on krill for survival.

Sir David Attenborough has voiced his concerns about this practice. In his film Ocean, which showed krill trawlers operating alongside Antarctic whales, he warned: “Some claim this is sustainable but we might be removing the foundation of an entire ecosystem.” The image of industrial ships scooping up the base of the food chain while the animals that depend on it struggle nearby is stark and troubling.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, known as CCAMLR, was established in the 1980s specifically to address concerns about krill fishing impacts. Operating under the Antarctic Treaty System, its mandate is to take a precautionary, ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. Twenty-six member countries plus the European Union meet annually to decide fishing catches and designate marine protected areas. In 2009, all members agreed to establish a network of marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean by 2012. Since then, only two have been created.

This year, for the first time, the amount of krill trawled reached what scientists consider an unsustainable level. Despite this, some countries are pushing to vastly increase catch limits in the ecologically sensitive Antarctic Peninsula region. Any such increase would likely exceed precautionary limits set by scientists, risking irreversible damage to the ecosystem.