AME-04: BROKE-West - An integrated survey of the waters between 30° and 80° East (CCAMLR Division 58.4.2)
Project Overview The main goal of this project was to survey and estimate the biomass of Antarctic krill using acoustic technology in the southwest Indian Ocean between 30° and 80°E in January-March 2006. The estimate of biomass will be used by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to update the out-of-date precautionary catch limit in the CCAMLR Division 58.4.2. During the survey, we took a full suite of ecological measurements in order to estimate the relationships between physical and chemical ocean parameters, primary productivity, microbial diversity, zooplankton distribution and abundance, krill distribution, abundance and demographics, fish distribution, abundance and genetics, and seabird and cetacean distributions. Project Objectives - To survey the distribution and abundance of Antarctic krill using ship-borne hydroacoustic techniques in the southwest Indian Ocean between 30° and 80°E.
- To provide information to CCAMLR to update the precautionary catch limit for Antarctic krill in the South West Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean (CCAMLR Division 58.4.2).
- To obtain biological information on the distribution and abundance of key groups of organisms and ecological processes along a section of the Australian Antarctic Territory that has been little studied, contemporaneously with the krill and oceanographic surveys.
- To characterise the relationship between oceanographic structure and ecosystem productivity.
National Collaborators International Collaborators
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