Trawling near Antarctica for krill — a crustacean central to the diet of whales and a critical buffer to global warming — has surged to a record and is fast approaching a never before reached seasonal catch limit that would trigger the unprecedented early closure of the remote fishery, The Associated Press has learned.
The fishing boom follows the failure last year of the U.S., Russia, China and two dozen other governments to approve a new management plan that would have mandated spreading out the area in which krill can be caught and creating a California-sized reserve along the environmentally sensitive Antarctic Peninsula.
