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Fish and squid are known to inhabit the waters, but 

 there is no quantitative information on their abundance 

 or productivity. Even krill, which have been the subject 

 of much scientific and commercial interest, are not well 

 known. Estimates of abundance and of potential yield vary 

 widely. Breeding stocks have not been identified. Some 

 aspects of the physiology of krill such as life span, age 

 of attainment of sexual maturity, and number of reproduc- 

 tive seasons are debated. 



It is necessary to recognize that information on the 

 Antarctic marine ecosystem is incomplete and to proceed 

 with extreme care in harvesting of any of the resources. 

 Continual monitoring of both the harvested resource and 

 related species is necessary to be able to understand and 

 observe impacts on target stocks and on the rest of the 

 ecosystem. 



The proposed federal action would require that data 

 from commercial harvesting be both collected and analyzed. 

 It would also encourage scientific investigation. 



The Antarctic marine ecosystem does have great 

 resource potential and the resources are renewable. Another 

 important objective of the proposed federal action is the 

 maintenance of this potential productivity over a very 

 long term. 



In managing Antarctic resources there will be trade 

 offs between long term and short term objectives. Inten- 

 sive harvesting to produce high yields for a few years is 

 possible with all the resource stocks, but is inconsistent 

 with a dependable harvest over many decades. 



There is a real possibility of overexploitation of 

 fish and seal stocks given present technology. As tech- 

 nology for krill harvesting becomes more efficieint, there 

 is also a real possibility of overexploitation of krill 

 even though they are very abundant. In addition, public 

 expectation for krill harvesting is high. The most widely 

 discussed popular estimates of potential krill harvesting 

 are considerably higher than yields which the system could 

 sustain over the long term (Green, 1977) . It is possible 

 that public pressure for a large short term harvest to the 

 detriment of long term yield would be great. 



One purpose for negotiating a conservation regime for 

 Antarctic living resources is to manage for long term yield 

 of the whole ecosystem. That will entail keeping short 



