of plastic in the debris, including plastic bottles, plastic 

 packing straps, net fragments, and buoys and ropes from bottom 

 trawl and long-line fisheries. The United Kingdom reported 

 finding 208 fur seals entangled in marine debris of human origin 

 on Bird Island, South Georgia, during the 1988/1989 pup rearing 

 season (this represented 0.5 to 1.0 percent of the total 

 population and suggests that as many as 5,000 to 10,000 fur seals 

 may be entangled in marine debris) . The United Kingdom also 

 reported that long-line fisheries, such as the one initiated in 

 the Antarctic by the Soviet Union in 1988/1989, may incidentally 

 catch substantial numbers of albatrosses, other seabirds, and 

 marine mammals. 



As noted in Chapter VI of this report, gillnets are par- 

 ticularly hazardous to marine mammals and seabirds as well as 

 fish species. Therefore, the United States sought and received 

 confirmation that no members are using or plan to use gillnets in 

 the Convention Area. In this context, representatives of Japan 

 and the Soviet Union indicated that, in their view, there are no 

 fishery resources in the Convention Area that can be caught 

 effectively using gillnets. 



The Commission called upon its members to review measures 

 taken to date and to take such additional measures as may be 

 necessary to insure that operators of vessels engaged in fishing 

 and related operations in the Convention Area maintain records 

 and report incidents of incidental catch of marine mammals and 

 birds as had been agreed previously. It requested that the 

 Scientific Committee consider and provide advice on steps that 

 might be taken to better assess and minimize the incidental take 

 of marine mammals and seabirds during commercial and exploratory 

 fishing operations. In addition, it agreed that members who had 

 not already done so would consider and take such steps as 

 appropriate to accept or ratify MARPOL Annex V and to insure that 

 their nationals and vessels operating in the Convention Area 

 comply with the provisions of the Annex. 



Ecosystem Monitoring — The Convention for the Conservation 

 of Antarctic Marine Living Resources requires that fishing and 

 related activities in the Convention Area be managed to prevent 

 irreversible changes in the structure and the dynamics of the 

 Antarctic marine ecosystem as well as to prevent overfishing and 

 depletion of harvested populations. In 1984, the Scientific 

 Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living 

 Resources established a Working Group to formulate and coordinate 

 implementation of a multi-national research program to assess and 

 monitor the status of the Antarctic marine ecosystem. Since 

 then, the Working Group has developed and members have begun 

 implementing a long-range program plan with three major compo- 

 nents: (1) monitoring of representative krill predators (e.g., 

 Antarctic fur seals and Adelie penguins) at a network of sites 

 throughout the Antarctic; (2) comprehensive studies of krill, 



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