Introduction

The first Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) was ready to be put into effect after the meeting held at Hobart, Australia in May-June 1982. This Convention was associated with the Scientific Committee which has an advisory role to the Convention from scientific viewpoints. Although the establishment of the Scientific Committee could not be formally completed in June 1982, because of difficulties in getting the final agreement on the rules of procedure for the Scientific Committee, an informal meeting for discussing the substantial scientific problems for the Convention by the participating members was held between 7 and 10 June 1982 in Hobart. In the informal meeting of CCAMLR-Scientific Committee participants, five major problems to be solved for the purpose of implementing the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources were pointed out as consensus of the meeting. The five problems are as follows:

1. (1) Inventory of activities and information.

2. (2) Review of the state of the ecosystem and modelling of Antarctic ecosystem.

3. (3) Identification of research needs and gaps in present knowledge.

4. (4) Management goals.

5. (5) CCAMLR data base.

The four items, (1), (2), (3) and (5) are aiming to acquire a sufficiently reliable basis for managing reasonably well the Antarctic marine living resources, particularly krill, through the practically best available scheme which could be summarized by Item (4).