International legal protection of seals

The article gives a brief description of the various species of seals. In the city of Arkhangelsk there is a monument to a seal. Two species of seals live in the coastal waters of Russia: the Steinger seal and the European seal. They are listed in the Red Book. The article analyzes the conventions and agreements on the protection of seals: Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals 1972, the Agreement on the cooperation in research, conservation and management of marine mammals in the North Atlantic 1992, the Agreement between the Government of the USSR and the Government of Norway on Measures to regulate fishing, sealing and protection of seal stocks in the Northeast Atlantic 1957. The decisions of the 51st session of the Joint Norwegian–Russian Fisheries Commission are analyzed. The article ends with an outline of the contribution of the Russian Federation to the rational seal fishery.

The Future of Antarctica

What agreements are in place for the protection of Antarctic marine life? There are three agreements that are designed to protect marine life in the seas around Antarctica. The first one to be concluded was the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (CCAS), which...

Arguing with Seals

This chapter analyzes the scientific and diplomatic debates on the question of sealing and seal conservation from 1964 to 1972, particularly the negotiation of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals. Because the Antarctic Treaty did not apply to the high seas, both scientists and diplomats noted that their 1964 conservation efforts did not cover animals, such as seals and penguins, when they were in the ocean. This gap seemed problematic when there was a push in the mid-1960s to renew commercial sealing in the Antarctic. The Antarctic Treaty parties thus committed to negotiating a treaty to cover seals in the high seas. They persisted in negotiating this agreement even when the prospect of renewed sealing lapsed, because seals and sealing became a useful subject by which the treaty parties, and scientists within SCAR, could continue to mark out their authority and positions for the Antarctic.

The Greening of Antarctica

The Greening of Antarctica investigates the development of an international regime of environmental protection and management for Antarctica between the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 and the signing of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. During those two decades the parties to the Antarctic Treaty and an international community of scientists surrounding the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research reimagined Antarctica from being a cold, sterile, and abiotic wilderness into a fragile and extensive regional ecosystem. This book investigates this change by analyzing the negotiations and developments surrounding four environmental agreements: the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora in 1964, the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals in 1972, a voluntary restraint resolution on Antarctic mining in 1977, and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. The development of the Antarctic Treaty and the related conceptual changes occurred because states and scientists were continually searching for authority and power within various realms. All actors were balancing their search for power and authority with the desire to maintain stability and peace in the region. In this international and diplomatic context, the actors were not simply trying to keep relations between themselves orderly; they were also ordering the human relationship with the environment through treaties.

DETECTING ANTARCTIC SEALS AND FLYING SEABIRDS BY UAV

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In recent years Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) became a fast-developing technology with manifold fields of application. In the field of wildlife biology, it offers the opportunity to quantify populations, to map the spatial distribution of species and to observe the behavior of animals with no or low disturbance. Moreover, UAV based mapping allows to obtain data from sites which are hardly or not accessible and to cover much larger areas than by traditional ground based methods. The advantages of UAV based mapping are of particular relevance under the harsh conditions of Antarctic fieldwork. Whether certain species qualify for UAV based monitoring depends on their detectability from the distance and the distinctiveness of their characteristics in comparison to other species, which has not been studied for Antarctic species in detail so far. This study aims to evaluate how and under which conditions, particularly flight height, Antarctic flying seabird and seal species are detectable in aerial imagery. A trial was conducted comparing the detection rate of different observers for several Antarctic species in aerial images of different ground sample distances. Descriptions of individual appearance as well as body size dimensions are delivered for all species. For most of the investigated species, monitoring proves to be possible from practical flight heights, while others are still very hard to detect even in low altitudes. A concluding table is given aiming to provide a guide for future surveys on which flight altitudes to chose and how to identify focal study objects.</p>