H-4 

 INTRODUCTION 



2. To encourage and stimulate investigations of the ecology and population 

 dynamics of the organisms at different trophic levels with particular 

 reference to krill, squid, fishes and whales. 



3. To maintain liaison with FAO. 



4. To advise SCAR and SCOR and through them other international organi- 

 zations and in particular to respond to relevant recommendations 

 of IOC and Antarctic Treaty consultative meetings. 



At its Executive Committee meeting in November 1975 SCOR, at the invitation of SCAR, 

 agreed to cosponsor the group and adopted it as its Working Group 54. 



In order to initiate action in relation to IOC and Antarctic Treaty invitations, the first 

 meeting of the reconstituted Group of Specialists was convened at the Scott Polar Research 

 Institute in Cambridge, England, 6-8 October 1975 (SCAR Bulletin, 1976). During this 

 meeting, the group agreed that its first task should be to review all existing information and to 

 bring together knowledge of ongoing and presently planned programmes of marine biological 

 investigations. The group also undertook the preparation of practical proposals for long term 

 co-operative investigations of the Southern Ocean. The group welcomed the offer of the United 

 States to host a scientific meeting on the living resources of the Southern Ocean. 



Accordingly, an international conference of experts was held at the US National Academy 

 of Science Summer Studies Center in Woods Hole, Mass, 17-21 August 1976, and was followed 

 by a meeting of the Group of Specialists (23—25 August). The chief objective of both was to 

 review the present knowledge of the living resources of the Southern Ocean and to develop a 

 proposal for future co-operative studies in the area. This proposal is referred to as the Biological 

 Investigations of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks (BIOMASS). The research programmes 

 included in BIOMASS are discussed in the following sections. 



However, before presenting these programmes, it is imperative to take into account the 

 likely effect of marine pollution on the Antarctic ecosystem and how it relates to the proposed 

 BIOMASS investigations. 



1.1.3 Marine pollution 



Recently the question of exploitation of Antarctic mineral resources has come under 

 discussion within the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and elsewhere. There is a general 

 consensus that possible petroleum and natural gas deposits on the Antarctic continental shelf 

 are the resources most likely to attract interest in the near future. The Eighth Antarctic Treaty 

 Consultative Meeting in 1975 invited SCAR 'to undertake an assessment on the basis of 

 available information of the possible impact on the environment of the Treaty area and other 

 ecosystems dependent on the Antarctic environment if mineral exploration and/or exploitation 

 were to occur there'. SCAR compiled a preliminary assessment as a result of various informal 

 consultations with individual scientists and specialists and by correspondence with SCAR 

 National Committees, based on the experience of scientific investigations in the Antarctic 

 carried out by many nations over a number of years. This was submitted to a special 

 preparatory meeting for the Ninth Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, Paris, June/July 

 1976, which then invited SCAR to undertake a more detailed assessment, based on existing 

 knowledge, for consideration at the Ninth Consultative Meeting in 1977. 



At its Fourteenth General Meeting in October 1976, SCAR expressed its willingness to 

 respond to this invitation and to treat such an assessment as a task closely allied to its main 

 objectives, although the degree of detail achievable in this further assessment would depend on 

 the financial support available. To carry out the task SCAR established a Group of SpeciaUsts 

 on Environmental Impact Assessment of Mineral Resource Exploration and Exploitation in the 

 Antarctic (EAMREA), whose activities will fall into two phases: 



