Krill, Law, and the Fragile Loop That Keeps the Ocean Alive

By: David Michel

January 27, 2026

“If the oceans die, we die.” — Captain Paul Watson

For most people, Antarctic krill are invisible. They are too small to inspire awe, too distant to provoke alarm, and too easily reduced to an ingredient on a label, a commodity in a global supply chain. Yet krill are not a “resource” in any ethical or ecological sense. They are sentient beings, and collectively they form a living hinge upon which the Southern Ocean, and much of life on Earth, depends.

To speak of krill only in economic terms is already to misunderstand them. They are not units of extraction. They are participants in a living system so vast and so finely balanced that disturbing it at scale risks consequences far beyond Antarctica.

This is not sentiment. It is ecology.

A Living Loop, Not a Linear Chain

People often ask where this system begins. With krill, or with whales. The honest answer is that it does not begin at all. It is not a line. It is a loop. Phytoplankton, microscopic life-forms drifting near the ocean’s surface, convert sunlight and dissolved nutrients into organic matter while drawing carbon from the atmosphere. Antarctic krill feed on this phytoplankton, transforming invisible productivity into dense, mobile life that can be consumed by whales, penguins, seals, seabirds, and fish.

Whales, in turn, are not merely consumers. Through their migrations and their nutrient-rich feces, they recycle nitrogen and iron back into surface waters, stimulating phytoplankton growth. Scientists describe this process as the “whale pump,” a feedback mechanism that helps sustain the productivity of the very waters that feed whales and krill alike.

Penguins, seals, and seabirds depend on krill as an accessible, energy-rich foundation that allows them to breed, migrate, and survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth. Remove or weaken one part of this loop, and the others falter. Stress several at once, climate-driven sea ice loss, warming waters, and industrial extraction, and the loop can begin to unravel.

This is why the question feels dizzying. It should. Linear thinking fails here. What we are witnessing is not a single species under pressure, but a living feedback system being pushed toward a threshold.

Industrial Krill Fishing and the Violence of Abstraction

Each year, industrial fleets remove hundreds of thousands of tonnes of krill from the Southern Ocean. Under the current management system of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), krill fishing in a key region of the Southern Ocean, known as Statistical Area 48, is governed by a so-called “trigger level” of approximately 620,000 metric tonnes per year.

This figure is often described as a quota, but that framing is misleading. The 620,000-tonne level is not a biologically derived sustainability limit. It is a regulatory threshold based on historical catch patterns, intended to trigger additional management measures or closures once reached. It does not account for fine-scale spatial concentration, predator foraging needs, or the compounding effects of climate change.

In recent seasons, this trigger level has been reached rapidly, allowing fleets to concentrate extraction in precisely the same areas and seasons where whales and penguins most depend on krill.

Keystone species are not defined by abundance alone. They are defined by consequence. Much of this krill is not taken to alleviate hunger or meet genuine human need. It is processed into feed for industrial salmon farms or marketed as premium supplements. Wild krill are removed from one of the planet’s last relatively intact marine ecosystems to sustain captive animals confined in net pens, systems already associated with sea lice proliferation, disease transmission, chemical treatments, and ecological degradation.

As Captain Paul Watson has said, “We are stripping life from the ocean to feed prisoners of our own making.” This is not efficiency. It is ethical and ecological madness.

Law Exists. Enforcement Does Not

In January 2026, the High Seas Treaty, formally known as the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, entered into force. The treaty establishes a legal framework for protecting biodiversity in the two-thirds of the ocean that lies beyond national jurisdiction, including the Southern Ocean.

It allows for marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments, and international cooperation. What it does not do, by itself, is stop a single trawler. Law without enforcement is not protection. It is paperwork.

For decades, the high seas have functioned as a regulatory void, a place where extraction accelerates as oversight fades with distance. The treaty changes what is legally possible, but not what is politically inevitable, unless nations are willing to act.

This is the gap the Captain Paul Watson Foundation exists to confront. “Our purpose is not to replace governments,” Watson has said. “It is to act when governments refuse to enforce their own laws.”

Direct Intervention as Moral and Legal Fidelity

The Foundation’s missions are grounded in international conservation law, including the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and the High Seas Treaty. Our ships do not sail as lawless actors. They sail as witnesses, monitors, and, when necessary, physical barriers to ongoing harm.

This is aggressive nonviolent intervention. It carries risk. It invites criticism. And it exists precisely because treaties without presence are ignored. We do not intervene because we believe ourselves above the law. We intervene because the law is being abandoned where it matters most, on the water, in real time, with real consequences for living beings who cannot advocate for themselves.

Beyond “Resources,” Toward Responsibility

From a vegan and animal-rights perspective, language matters. When ecosystems are described only in terms of “resources,” life is already being framed as something to be used rather than something to be respected.

A degraded ecosystem does not merely “produce less.” It suffers. It loses resilience. It becomes more vulnerable to collapse, invasion, and simplification. Biodiversity is not an inventory. It is a web of relationships, and when those relationships are severed, the damage is often irreversible.

Scientific bodies such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have made clear that biodiversity loss undermines climate stability, food systems, and human health. But beyond science lies a deeper truth, we are not separate from these systems. We are depending on them.

A Fight for a Living Planet

Krill are small, but their role is vast. They are the blood of the Southern Ocean. Without them, whales starve. Penguins fail. The ocean’s ability to regulate climate weakens. Silence spreads where life once surged.

“The ocean is not dying,” Captain Paul Watson has said. “It is being killed.” Defending krill is not an abstract conservation campaign. It is a defense of a living system that makes life on this planet possible. It is a refusal to accept a world where short-term profit justifies annihilation.

This is a fight for whales and penguins, for krill and phytoplankton, for the living ocean itself. And in the end, it is a fight for our own survival on a beautiful, fragile planet that will not forgive us if we continue to treat life as expendable.

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Notes and Sources

High Seas Treaty (BBNJ Agreement)
United Nations. Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. Entered into force January 2026.

CCAMLR Krill Management and the 620,000-tonne Trigger Level
CCAMLR. Conservation Measure 51-01 and associated scientific reports.
Hillenbrand et al., “Antarctic krill fisheries, management, and ecosystem risks,” ICES Journal of Marine Science.
PNAS, “Concentrated krill fishing and predator overlap in the Southern Ocean.”

Krill, Carbon Cycling, and Southern Ocean Ecology
Cavanagh et al., “The role of Antarctic krill in biogeochemical cycles,” Nature Communications.
Atkinson et al., “Krill distribution and climate change impacts,” Nature Climate Change.

Whale Pump and Nutrient Recycling
Roman and McCarthy, “The whale pump, marine mammals enhance primary productivity,” PLoS ONE.

Penguins and Krill Availability
Trathan et al., “Penguin responses to changes in krill availability,” Marine Ecology Progress Series.
NOAA Antarctic Ecosystem Research summaries.

Biodiversity and Human Survival
IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Whitmee et al., “Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch,” The Lancet.

Aquaculture Impacts
Ford and Myers, “A global assessment of salmon aquaculture impacts on wild salmon,” PLoS Biology.
Costello et al., “The future of food from the sea,” Nature.