“As an eternal optimist, I also think that these are times where we need inspiration, and we need examples of cooperation and success. The Southern Ocean and Antarctica is really ripe for that. It's the perfect place to demonstrate all of the best of humanity. That is where we can really show people that we are capable of doing great things. We recognize the value of these ecosystems, and we can take urgent action and protect them. I think we all need that win.”
—Holly Curry
Did you know each year on April 25th we celebrate World Penguin Day? Although the soft little creatures briefly made headlines last month as victims of President Trump’s trade war, they are not typically at the forefront of our minds (e.g. if mainstream news organizations had known about World Penguin Day, they likely would have capitalized on it for follow-up stories about the tariffs). Birds are an important part of the climate conversation: not only do they serve mascots for their habitats, but many conservationists consider them to be indicator species. This means that the health of bird populations, and their ability to adapt to a wetter warmer world, signifies the magnitude and (ir)reversibility of any environmental changes. While globally 9 of the 18 species of penguin are classified as Vulnerable or Endangered, there are no Endangered penguins in Antarctica. This is because their environment has been protected from exploitation over the years by several international organizations, with none having a larger role than the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC).
Established in 1978, the ASOC was founded with a singular purpose: uniting countries around the world to protect all of the South Pole’s environments. After America lead the effort to pass The 1961 Antarctic Treaty, which ensured the continent to forever be a place of peace and collaborative science, all signatories agreed to relinquish territorial claims on the Antarctic continent. However, in characteristic Western fashion, the Treaty failed to directly mention the Southern Ocean, leaving the seas vulnerable to exploitation and mismanagement.
In 1982 the ASOC organized the founding of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Life to protect and preserve flora and fauna in the region, everything from penguins to plankton. The Commission has since grown to 27 Member States including the US, South Africa, Namibia and Australia. 10 other countries including Canada and Peru have acceded to its goals of “ecosystem-based management,” wherein environments are considered independent actors in the human-Antarctic relationship. The ASOC also lobbied successfully for the UN to pass a Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which outlawed mining and resource extraction in the South Pole. Lately the organization has been focused on establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) which are the aquatic version of wildlife preserves. Sections of the ocean are set aside to prevent overfishing and pollution so that ocean dynamics — and the animals that depend on them — are not negatively affected.
The above map was created in 2022 by the Marine Conservation Institute, which has decried the concentration of MPAs in the Pacific as a failure to adhere to the 30 By 30 Initiative's widespread conservation goals. Yet this very “lack of ecosystem representativity” is not an indicator of bias but rather a reflection of cultural differences. As discussed in a previous edition of In Circulation, there is a larger density of knowledge held by island communities than by Western scientists in the Pacific. The establishment of MPAs in that ocean is, therefore, a recognition of the ocean’s importance to locals communities. This logic, however, fails to explain the significant number of MPAs in the Southern Ocean, which is largely uninhabited by humans.
In search of answers to my questions, I reached out to Holly Curry, the ASOC’s Director of Marine Protected Area Campaigns. This week I had the privilege of interviewing her about climate change in the Antarctic continent, the importance of international cooperation and the need for MPAs in the Southern Ocean. Feel free to listen to the audio above or read the edited transcript below.
The role of the ASOC
Diana: I was wondering if you could speak to what the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition does. Does it work mostly with governments or local conservation organizations?
Holly: The ASOC is a group of NGOs. We have been around since 1978 and we're really unique because we have observer status in the Antarctic Treaty system. We get to attend and really participate in a very unique way in Antarctic governance. We join all of the Antarctic Treaty meetings including the main Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting, which is held once a year, as well as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Their commission meets once a year and talks about marine protection and all things fishery management in relation to the Southern Ocean. We try to bring the civil society perspective and represent all these environmental groups that are interested in Southern Ocean and Antarctic conservation.
D: I see. Do you also work with local or smaller nonprofits to help inform them about what's going on or do you invite them to join you or…?
H: We have coalition members, and they are a really wide array of organizations [from] WWF and Greenpeace all the way to small nonprofits that are working on local issues are interested in aspects of Southern Ocean conservation. For example, one of our newer members Wildlife Jewels, which is really a nonprofit of one that's run out of California, does amazing artwork and conservation work featuring endangered species. She's very interested in the Antarctic critters and ties that into her work. We also have international partners, like the Argentina-based group Agenda Antártica. [Our partners are] very global, very eclectic, and we try to engage with those partners not just because it's helpful to have a presence in different areas but also because they bring a lot of unique expertise. Some coalition members are very engaged in whales and dolphins and cetaceans, and they bring that expertise to us and we all benefit from their presence in the group.
American involvement in ASOC
D: As far as I know, the US doesn't have any territory in the Antarctic or Southern Oceans. How come ASOC came to be an American-based organization?
H: The creation of ASOC definitely predates me; I’ve been with this campaign for about a year and a half, but [US-based attorney] Jim Barnes is one of our founders. He was very engaged with the Antarctic Treaty system, with the Environmental Protocol, with CCAMLR, and is still involved in ASOC as our board president right now. But even though the US isn't a claimant in Antarctica, it has always been very engaged in Antarctic governance, very involved in the Treaty system, has always been a leader in that process and advocated for cooperation and science. And the US of course, has a major presence in Antarctica in our research and bases there.
D: So back to what I had asked about [your diverse array of] local and global [member] organizations: do you guys take more of an advisory role? Do you in any way help these organizations create priorities, or do they kind of inform you about local knowledge?
H: That's a good question – I would say it's more the latter. As an example, we have a bunch of groups that do a lot of whale research, and that sort of information helps us figure out what our priorities are in the Southern Ocean. We partner with lots of scientists too and try to sponsor research and support it financially when we're able to. We partner with universities and academics so that we go into these meetings really as informed as humanly possible. I would say our decision-making and our policies are very much informed by the work of our members. A number of them are incredible experts. We have wonderful resources like toothfish scientists [and others in] some very specific fields that we couldn't possibly all be experts on. They really help us to take those policy positions in a way that's informed by the science.
We also produce a lot of papers and policy positions for the Treaty meetings, and we're always happy to share that sort of information with our members. We often have calls to action where we say '“it's really important that Government X, Y, and Z does this,” so we'll try to work with [organizations] locally to submit comments or letters or that sort of thing.
D: In recent months, have you noticed any partner countries or partner organizations backing off involvement because of the US government's decision to cut a lot of funding to NOAA and National Weather Service and USGS?
H: No, we're lucky in that none of those cuts to date have directly impacted our work. Of course, we are big science fans; we want to see research robustly funded and supported at the government level. And a lot of the work that takes place in the Southern Ocean in Antarctica is NOAA related. So a concerning development for sure.
Because a number of our members are international, if we have heard concerns, we reiterate that the Treaty system endures, and there has to be this continuity in science and research. Many members of the Treaty system are contributing with really robust research, so that's good. But since I'm from the US it's important to me that the US also continue to lead in science and invest in research there in the poles!
Antarctic inspiration
D: You said you've only been with ASOC for a year and a half. What specifically inspires you about the ocean and what motivated you to become a part of Southern Ocean MPA creation?
H: Yeah, such a good question. I spent a long time working in ocean conservation in Florida. I used to lead Surfrider Foundation's policy work for about 10 years, and I loved that work, but it also felt so small in terms of the global ocean issues. There's just so much out there [and] Antarctica is so unique. It's the only continent that has no permanent human inhabitants. It's dedicated to peace and science and cooperation, which is amazing and inspiring I think now more than ever, is an incredibly resonant message. I [also] love that the Antarctic Treaty system came about during the Cold War. It was a very politically fraught time and still countries managed to come together put their own interests aside and prioritize cooperation. So working on Antarctic issues in and of itself is just inspiring on the daily. Of course, when you think of the species that call the Southern Ocean home, it's even more rewarding.
It seems like a transformative journey for people who do manage to get to Antarctica to see one of the last most pristine wildernesses in the world. It's so precious. It's so precarious. It is also, unfortunately, much like Florida, a sampler platter of all the environmental impacts that are unfolding in this planetary crisis. It's warming, it's experiencing unprecedented ice melt, there's plastic pollution now in areas where people rarely tread…
D: When you say plastic, do you know if it comes from the research stations or if it's just circulated by the currents from different oceans and ends up there?
H: My understanding is that it's both. There have been studies that have found higher concentrations of plastics near bases where there's more human population, obviously, but also that there are, there's a presence of microplastics in really pristine areas where there aren't people regularly. The assumption is that those are carried there by air and water currents from great distances. Unfortunately it seems like nowhere is untouched in terms of plastic pollution.
Southern Ocean MPAs
D: As I've written about previously for my newsletter [MPAs are] established in places that have cultures that are largely connected to the ocean, like Polynesia and the Indo-Pacific region. Now, because there are no humans in Antarctica, I was surprised to see that I think it's 10% or 12% of the Southern Ocean is –
H: Yes, it's around 13% by now.
D: Wow – is conserved under Marine Protected Areas. Is that a success of lobbying on the international scale? How do you explain that?
H: CCAMLR is the governance system that is responsible for protecting the Southern Ocean and the marine inhabitants there. It's really unique because it prioritizes conservation: it's not just about managing fisheries or extracting resources, it's genuinely about protecting an area. It takes a uniquely ecosystem-based approach to conservation. CCAMLR is responsible for the first entirely high seas MPA (the South Orkney Island Southern Shelf) and the largest high seas MPA (the Ross Sea Region). Importantly, this body, in addition to creating these two MPAs, has also committed to creating a representative system of Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean. [It] has committed not only to protecting specific areas but making sure that each of the [nine planning] domains are represented adequately in the system of MPAs.
Right now there are four additional proposals. They're ready for adoption. What's missing is political will. So we really need those members of CCAMLR to come together again, because CCAMLR like all of the Treaty system is consensus-based, so it requires unanimity. If one country opposes, then it can't proceed. But if those four MPAs were to be approved and completed roughly 26% of the Southern Ocean would be covered by Marine Protected Areas!
D: Wow. So that would be double what it is right now.
H: Yes. The Southern Oceans, of course, ecologically important, but also really important when you think about global commitments to creating MPAs and protecting particularly the high seas. Most countries have committed to this 30 By 30 goal, which you've probably heard in a number of contexts. It's going to be really hard to hit that 30% of the ocean if we're not protecting the high seas. And CCAMLR is the only international body that's ready right now to take action and is capable of enacting that kind of legal framework to protect the high seas.
D: I know certain countries that have small islands, like South Africa and Argentina. [Are] a majority of the Southern Ocean MPAs that you guys are wanting to adopt high seas level?
H: If I’m crunching my numbers correctly about 6% or 7% [of existing MPAs] are in the sub-Antarctic islands. But the rest would be part of this CCAMLR convention area, and part of the Southern Ocean generally, [which is] high seas.
D: Got it. So CCAMLR would then be the institution that is in charge of actually establishing the MPA. It doesn't need to go through the UN or anything?
H: No. The governments engage in whatever internal processes they have to get support for their position on the MPAs. In the end, it's a decision of those members of that Treaty system to decide. It does not go through the UN or any other international body. It's a CCAMLR decision. So CCAMLR meets every October in Hobart, Tasmania, which is where the secretariat is headquartered. So this October 2025, as they've had for a number of years, they'll have the opportunity to take up these MPA proposals and hopefully advance them. Because, again, it's urgent.
Political ‘wills’ and geopolitical ‘wont’s’
D: The next question I have is two parts. One is, how do you go about selecting an area of the ocean to be part of an MPA and second, if you could, give an example of the political will to not make that area an MPA.
H: The governments propose these MPAs and they all utilize the best available science. The requirement of this system is that [proposals must] be well grounded in research.
These four proposals that are existing right now all do unique things. One is called the Domain One MPA, also known as the Antarctic Peninsula MPA. It was proposed in 2017 and it is a really unique area because it's where everything is happening in Antarctica. It's where many Antarctic predators forage, so you get tons of seabirds and whales and marine mammals. It's also where most of the krill fishing is happening and tourism operators go, so it's a real hotbed of opportunity. Domain One does a couple of things: it sets aside specific areas to protect predators because most everything in the Antarctic ecosystem either eats krill directly or eats something that eats krill, and it also considers things like climate impacts. The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the areas in Antarctica that's warming the fastest.
So these are all things that come into consideration for the scientists and the proponents as they create these proposals. They go through this very complex process through scientific committees [at CCAMLR] where they scrutinize the science and make sure that it really is the best available.
All four MPA proposals [are] geographically unique. There's another one in Weddell Sea – if you're, you are, I think, an Antarctica nerd, that's the home of Shackleton's Endurance.
D: Oh, yes! So cool.
H: That same area has this huge ice fish colony, the largest fish nesting area anywhere in the world. So there's two proposals in the Weddell Sea and another one in the East Antarctic as well. And some [MPA proposals] are more researched than others, but in some instances the fact that they are kind of under researched is another reason to protect that area because we don't know what necessarily is at risk there.
D: Ah. So it's as much of scientists getting permission through CCAMLR to study in specific areas or taking different research vessels there, and also noting that while certain areas may be very remote, those should be protected specifically because humans have not had the chance to go there and see what's going on?
H: One of the interesting things in terms of Marine Protected Areas is not necessarily that an MPA is going to insulate one particular area from climate change. That's going to happen regardless of the MPA. But it does protect the area from other stressors and in doing that creates an natural laboratory for scientists to isolate the impacts of climate change. So you can look at, this is what the ecosystem looks like when there's krill fishing and toothfish fishing and tourism and all of these human impacts – and this is what it looks like when there aren't any of those things because it's part of a protected area.
D: That's fascinating. I had not considered that. But climate change is happening so quickly at the poles. Would it be pessimistic for me to say that it's too late to stop things or reverse things?
H: I can't accept that premise because then it would be just too sad to go on. I don't know that it's too late to stop things, but we know that there's already impacts from climate change. It seems like every Antarctic summer there's a fresh series of articles coming out about how it's the lowest extent of summer sea ice ever or it's the warmest summer ever. [But] I don't think it's too late to stop the trend.
When we talk about climate and the Southern Ocean, it's not just about that climate laboratory that MPAs create. They also create protected areas for species to be free from the other stressors. They can adapt more easily, they can deal with warmer waters, maybe more acidic waters if they're not having to deal with other externalities from human impacts.
D: Circling back to what I had asked about the political will to create versus not to create Antarctic MPAs, you mentioned the Antarctic Treaty. From what I've read it seems like it was very forward thinking at the time. However, I did not see anything wherein it accounts for climate change because of course, that wasn't something that was on the forefront of people's minds [in the 1950s]. So when governments don't want to create an MPA, do they hide behind the existing policies, or is it more that they're concerned for fisheries or for tourism?
H: There are some CCAMLR members that are fishing countries, and the main fishing industries in the Southern Ocean right now are Patagonian Toothfish, more commonly known on menus as Chilean Sea Bass (though neither Chilean nor a sea bass). The other is krill. Krill's a very interesting industry because it is used as a nutraceutical, meaning it's harvested for Omega-3 supplements you might see in the fish oil section [of a pharmacy]. It's also used for feeding pets and aquaculture: the redness of Antarctic krill can turn farm salmon that nice, pretty pink color. It's not necessarily for human consumption; it's sort of a luxury item. Some countries engage in harvesting of one or both, so there is an economic interest there, and it can sometimes compete with the conservation interests of CCAMLR.
CCAMLR has also become this outpost where tensions tend to play out, and it's not always about conservation or the issues at hand, but because it is consensus based it's another place where geopolitical issues tend to surface. It's hard to find consensus among 26 countries plus the EU. We work with someone who worked very closely on the Ross Sea region MPA and he regularly tells this story about how it didn't look good for negotiations for a long time, and it took years and years of regular meetings between all the parties who were interested and really negotiating in good faith to try and find an agreement. And then it just happened one day! I don't know if it will happen magically with these MPA proposals. I hope so. But one of [ASOC’s] key roles is to remind the members of CCAMLR that these are urgent issues that require urgent solutions. All these countries have made commitments to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. So here's one good, easy way to do it.
There's this argument to be made around the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in its exceptionalism, in its dedication to peace and science and research that, my gosh, if there's anywhere we should start in terms of these large-scale protections, it should surely be Antarctica and the Southern Ocean! I think what it will take is consistent, open dialogue. Globally, everyone's looking for opportunities to engage in multilateralism and to come together and begin to find solutions. I genuinely think that the Southern Ocean is that place where those conversations can start.
North vs. South Pole
D: I've done a lot of research about the Arctic, and that is particularly a place where geopolitical tensions in the past 10 years especially, have come to a head. Russia has been excluded from collaborations and that's unfortunate from a science perspective because they do control a significant portion of the Arctic Ocean. It's really important to highlight that even if there are geopolitical tensions in Antarctica they're not nearly as bad as they are on the other end of the earth…! And there seems to be more specific, concrete [conservation] goals in the Antarctic and there don't seem to be as many initiatives in the Arctic Ocean. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit.
H: That's an interesting question and I probably know too little about Arctic affairs to even be educated on this, but I do think there's a lot of structure to the Treaty system. It's a very deliberative Treaty body, and sometimes the flip side of that is that it's hard to make change. It sometimes takes a while, but in some instances I think that can be a good thing. I guess I would come back to the creation of the Antarctic Treaty system at a time of really fraught geopolitics originally. It's 1959 when the Treaty is signed, the height of the Cold War, and if we can manage to implement something so forward looking, so collaborative with all of those really existential crises occurring simultaneously then I feel confident that we can navigate the current geopolitical tensions in the Southern Ocean.
Geoengineering & resource extraction
D: Have you come into any conflict with either scientists or companies that want to test either different geoengineering technologies or do deep sea mining in the Antarctic and/or the Southern Ocean?
H: To my knowledge, none of those proposals have ever meaningfully been raised in the Antarctic context. I do hear about them every so often. At ASOC we've taken a pretty blanket position opposing geoengineering efforts; for the most part, we try to raise awareness about them. It's definitely not our bailiwick. But the Environmental Protocol, which is part of the Treaty system, has a prohibition on minerals exploitation that's taken very seriously. There's not an imminent threat of any of that type of exploitation happening in the Southern Ocean. I do think CCAMLR members are probably looking at unilateral action in the high seas as a bad precedent that they wouldn't want to see replicated. So hopefully all of that will reinforce the Treaty system itself and the protections that it has in place, which are robust.
How Antarcticharisma “deliver[s] big wins for humanity”
D: In some of my newsletters I've written about why the media doesn't give ocean issues as much attention, especially in the context of climate change. A lot of climate stories tend to be terrestrially focused – that makes sense to a certain extent because we're humans and we live on the land, but you know, 71% of our earth is water. I read a paper in college about Nonhuman Charisma, and it talked about how there's ecological charisma, which is something that humans see every day, like a tree or a blade of grass. And there's corporeal charisma, which is when humans [can] see themselves in [certain] animals. And finally, there's aesthetic charisma, which is when people think penguins are cute, for example.
So I was wondering how either you personally or [ASOC] increases the charisma of the Southern Ocean. What are your outreach strategies? What kind of things do you like to communicate about to get people to care about Antarctic conservation?
H: Such an interesting question. When I started with this campaign, I was so excited because I was like, I get penguins! Truly some of the most charismatic species in the world are found in Antarctica and in the Southern Ocean. Penguins are certainly one of them, but I'm a big whale girl. I'm also always eager to put, Antarctic wildlife on things.
Lately we've been focusing on a narrative that is trying to bring Antarctica in a more personal way for people. It's easy to think that what happens in Antarctica so far away, probably most of us will never go there and never see it. Or that it's isolated and what happens there stays there and has no bearing on us. And that's absolutely not true because it's a global connection of systems: all the ocean currents are influenced by the health of the Southern Ocean. Global nutrient circulation is largely impacted by the health of the Southern Ocean. Our climate is moderated by the Southern Ocean. It's so important to see all of these things as holistically a system worth protecting, if not for the penguins and the cool whales and things like that, but also because it benefits humanity in really important ways. That sometimes is lost because [Antarctica] seems like this far away [place of the] golden age of Explorers, but it impacts our daily lives. We try to remind not just the public but also decisionmakers that this may not be forefront of your issues, but this is important too, and it's connected to you whether you know it or not in really substantial ways.
D: Absolutely. I feel like there's a current impulse to draw inward: a lot of countries are either isolating or are skeptical of what's beyond their borders. With ocean conservation, you can't afford to do that because if something's happening in one part of the ocean, at some point soon it's going to start happening in yours. I think that point about the global system, how everything is connected is a really excellent point and one that Antarctica really like perfectly encapsulates.
H: And as an eternal optimist, I also think that these are times where we need inspiration, and we need examples of cooperation and success. The Southern Ocean and Antarctica is really ripe for that. It's the perfect place to demonstrate all of the best of humanity. That is where we can really show people that we are capable of doing great things. We recognize the value of these ecosystems, and we can take urgent action and protect them. I think we all need that win. The Southern Ocean and Antarctica and the Treaty system generally is just very well positioned to deliver big wins for humanity.
Sources
About the ASOC | CCAMLR | Holly’s interview with Together for the Ocean | Antarctic Legacy of South Africa | Antarctic Treaty environmental protection | Protected Planet dataset on MPAs
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