S.Georgia : Dr. Walton Sets the Record Straight about Krill Exploitation and Oil Exploration in Antarctic Waters
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 12.12.2005 (Article Archived on 26.12.2005)
BAS's Dr. David Walton sheds some light on two important areas of Antarctic Research.
Photo (c) J. Brock (SARTMA) - Dr. Walton During a lecture about the five-year plan for Antarctic research.
DR WALTON SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT KRILL EXPLOITATION AND OIL EXPLORATION IN ANTARCTIC WATERS
Dr. Walton During the Lecture about BAS's five-year plan
By J. Brock (SARTMA)
Dr David Walton (DW), Chief Scientist at British Antarctic Survey is in the Antarctic initiating another five-year plan for the Research Bases that provide Antarctic science to all of us. On Tuesday, 29 November 2005 Dr. Walton gave a lecture about the five-year programme and a brief overview of the science in the Geography room of the FICS.
On the following day SARTMA was able to interview Dr. Walton about two areas of concern. One is the ban on oil exploration in the Weddell Sea and the other is whether or not Krill should be taken commercially.
SARTMA: You mentioned in your lecture that there would be no oil exploration in the Weddell Sea. I understand it is because of the delicate balance of the ecosystem in the Antarctic that oil exploration would upset it.
DW: The reason there won’t be any oil exploration – oil or gas or indeed for any hard minerals in the Antarctic is because a prohibition on that was written into the protocol for the protection of the Antarctic Environment. And, it lasts some 50 years initially and then can be renewed. It applies to the whole of the Antarctic and everywhere South of 60S – not just the Weddell Sea.
SARTMA: What are the affects of the naturally occurring hydrocarbons generation on the ecosystems in and the around the Antarctic continent, such as gas chimneys and naturally occurring oil slicks that can be spotted by satellite.
DW: I know of no persistent oil seeps at all. We know that there traces of oil and gas in the Ross Sea basin because that’s been found during normal drilling operations for sediment sampling. Those holes were capped. I am not aware of anybody that has drilled holes anywhere in the Weddell Sea, which is showing either oil or gas because most of the Weddell sea is covered by pack ice. It’s very hard to drill. There are hot spots but they are largely along the tectonic fault line so you would find those mostly in places like the South Sandwich Islands along the edge of the trench. And, they don’t appear to be directly connected to oil seepages or anything like that. There is no evidence on the surface on that. I would say that any oil slick in the surface is probably due to somebody tank washing or maybe even a ship sunk. We don’t find oil seepages like you do in some other parts of the world where they are coming out of oil sands which are lying on the bottom.
SARTMA: Do you perceive any knock-on effects from oil exploration here especially in the South Falkland Basin? And, are there any perceived knock-on effects of the exploration and exploitation around Tierra del Fuego?
DW: There should be no knock-on effects for the Antarctic because it’s covered by the International Treaty Agreement. People will continue to accumulate scientific data for both the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea Basins because they are interested in the structures – the geological structures that underlay them. And, I expect there will be some more drilling there in particular to sample some of the sedimentary sequences, which are in the basins. The seismic data we currently have is, I believe, not good enough to allow us to make any projections about the likelihood of oil reservoirs. The coverage is much less than you’ve got in the North and South Falkland Basin, where most companies appear to need extensive 3D Seismic these days before they are willing to put a drilling rig anywhere near. Nobody has that sort of data running around the Antarctic.
SARTMA: As for Krill, I was wondering if you knew what the reasoning was for developing a Krill fishery, seeing that some of the finished product looks and smells like Penguin Pooh.
DW: The Krill fishery provides a whole range of things. It was originally used to provide high quality Krill Paste …
SARTMA: That’s the stuff!
DW: The Japanese and the Russians use it. They make it into a number of products for Human consumption. They also use it as a high protein supplement for feeding cattle, so it’s an additive to cattle feed. These days, I believe, some of this is actually going as an additive into food for fish farms because it provides a range of amino acids which are very useful for feeding things like Salmon in cages. It’s also being used, at the moment, for a range of potential pharmaceutical materials. They are extracting enzymes from it as well as the shell to make a number of pharmaceutical preparations. So the 400,000 tonnes which can be caught at the moment is being used in a whole variety of ways.
SARTMA: Why target a species that is at the base of the food chain in parts of the South Atlantic and the Southern Ocean?
DW: That would be a problem if the fishery was run on the basis that most of the world’s fisheries are run on and that is a single target species approach. Actually, that’s not the way the Southern Ocean is run on an ecosystem-based approach. And, the food web is actually the fundamental system, which decides what species you can catch and how much you can catch. And the whole area is divided up into several areas with different total allowable catches in them. Each of those is set in respect to what is believed to be the population turn-over rate. And, the affect of the catch monitored by monitoring the higher predators like Penguins and Seals that are in that area to see that their numbers are protected by the fishery.
SARTMA: There has been research into the affect of sea ice melting and the populations of Krill in various areas. Some research around South Georgia shows that this is an unknown and there is a suspected increase in the amount of Krill in the waters surrounding the Island. Is the research complete? Did I ask questions about Krill population around South Georgia a bit too early on in the research to get the significant answer I got?
DW: We do have a good estimate for the Krill stocks in the Scotia Sea area. That was the result of a multi-national effort involving the research vessels of several countries around about five years ago. We had a concerted series of investigations to establish how much Krill was in the various parts of the Scotia Sea. So we have a sample of the whole of the Scotia Sea. We also know that the Bellingshausen Sea is the nursery for most of the Krill that is coming up the west side of the Peninsula and ending up in South Georgia. So we are concerned about the stability and the long-term future of the sea ice in the area because it’s clear that’s crucial for the early phases of Krill growth. I would say that we do intend – as far as I know – to have some cruises in the Bellingshausen Sea over the next few years to consolidate our information on that area of Krill life cycle. We’ve got quite good models now, which take Krill from the Bellingshausen Sea and show how quickly it moves through the current system and ends up in a different life-cycle around South Georgia. We have graphs for the oceanography, which underlies that. We have a large research programme based on Krill and dependent species and, in particular, we contribute the information we get to the CCAMLR Scientific Committee every year to make sure that all the related information is assessed by the Scientific Committee before making recommendations for the fishery.
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