SYDNEY: Access to fishing was the main stumbling block to agreement on two vast marine reserves in Antarctica, the head of the Australian delegation to international talks said Saturday.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) wrapped up talks Friday without securing the required consensus on the marine protected areas (MPAs) designed to conserve the pristine wilderness which is home to penguins, seals and whales.
“I think the issues are really about access to fishing,” Australian delegation head Nick Gales told reporters in Hobart. “It’s a normal kind of tension you have in conserving large areas of the world’s oceans against the interests of countries that wish to be down there fishing.”
Gales welcomed China’s last-minute support for a more than 1.5 million square kilometre (600,000 square mile) marine reserve in the Ross Sea, known as the “Last Ocean” because it is the only intact marine ecosystem left on Earth.
