CANBERRA -- Representatives of more than two dozen nations have gathered this week in the Australian city of Hobart to decide on rules governing ocean resources at the bottom of the world.

At the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), states with competing visions are to discuss krill fishing and marine protection in the resource-rich waters. For almost a decade, the CCAMLR has been deadlocked, with China and Russia resisting efforts to establish new marine protected areas.

Complicating the impasse is the related issue of how to regulate commercial Antarctic krill fishing as heavyweights Norway and China push to expand their permissible hauls beyond current limits.

The dispute illustrates long-running tensions surrounding consensus-based international rule-making bodies established in the post-World War II period. One question of growing urgency is how to accommodate a more assertive Beijing at a time when ecological stresses are growing, spurring calls for bolder regulatory moves.

The amount of krill being hauled out of the ocean is rising "rapidly" while climate change is transforming Antarctica's fragile ecosystems as sea temperatures rise and ice melts, piling pressure on countries to reach an agreement, says expert Simeon Hill.

Antarctic krill, tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that move together in massive schools, are a foundational part of the region's food web, supporting species like penguins, whales, and squid. They're also increasingly caught for feed for aquaculture, used in pet food and human supplements.

"The current catch is almost three times what it was a decade ago," said Hill, an ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey and member of the U.K. delegation at this week's meeting.

"We're probably still talking about a situation where the impacts of fishing on the krill stock itself are not likely to be harmful in a stable climate, but the problem is we don't have a stable climate," Hill said.

Norway, the largest krill fishing nation, last year proposed moving from a fixed catch limit to a "dynamic" approach that would increase catch limits while spreading fishing across smaller zones that could be monitored and managed by CCAMLR. However, others have raised concerns about the limits of the organization's funding.

China, however, argued that concentration of fishing activities was not a concern, while also opposing the establishment of protected areas.

This year, China, for the first time, is likely to put forward its own proposal for a marine protected area, says Tony Press, a professor at the University of Tasmania and former director of Australia's Antarctic Division.

The proposal, although unlikely to "break the impasse," illustrates China's efforts to use its growing footprint in the Antarctic and surrounding waters to shape international governance mechanisms "in the Chinese image," Press said.

"It's a negotiating ploy," he said, adding that discussions toward such an end would likely take a few years.

The discussions in Hobart highlight tensions beneath the surface of the Antarctic Treaty System. The set of agreements, built on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, freeze territorial claims on the uninhabited southern continent and promote science and international cooperation.

Established in the 1980s by treaty members, CCAMLR was created to manage fisheries and conserve marine ecosystems. It governs all waters south of the Antarctic Convergence. While a latecomer to the Antarctic, having joined the treaty in 1983, China's footprint on the region has grown since it established its first permanent station there in 1985. It now operates five stations and in 2025 announced plans for a sixth.

In Antarctica, "science is currency," says Jeffrey McGee, an expert on law and governance issues relating to Antarctica and oceans at the University of Tasmania. By that measure, power dynamics are potentially shifting, particularly with recent U.S. cuts in funding for polar research potentially opening up more space that China could fill.

Press sees overlapping but distinct reasons behind Beijing and Moscow's opposition to the proposals. Russia, he says, exhibits increasingly "erratic and belligerent" behavior in international fora and, though the country has a diminished presence in commercial fishing, opposes limits to its rights to fish in international waters. China, meanwhile, appears determined to avoid international precedents that limit access to resources.

"China has this view that it has the need to have global access to marine resources to feed its population," he said.

China's growing slice of the krill industry is one example of its hunger for Southern Ocean resources. China is the world's largest aquaculture producer and the number of China-flagged krill fishing vessels has increased to six. Norway, the world's largest producer of farmed salmon and second-largest exporter of aquatic animal products, according to United Nations figures, has four flagged vessels, but takes the largest catch, with more than 50% in the 2025 season.

Both countries have been pushing to expand catch allocations. For the second consecutive year, the Antarctic krill fishery closed early after the annual limit of 620,000 metric tons was reached. The threshold is a precautionary quota agreed to in 1990 and designed to prevent overfishing.

Hill said the current limit would be insufficient to protect krill stocks and the predators that feed on the crustaceans if fishing was spread out. However, much of the fishing is still centered on the Antarctic Peninsula, as warming waters have pushed krill further southwards, concentrating them further.

"Really, we do need to change current fishing patterns because there is too much catch concentration already," Hill said.

Press agreed, saying dispersing the fisheries is vital. "That is the only way in the very, very long term and the medium term to both increase krill catches and ensure ecological sustainability in Antarctica," he said, adding that he thinks there's room for progress.

"It might just be that [China's desire to increase its krill catch] might break the impasse ... on marine protected areas," he said.