How a Gold Rush for Krill Dietary Supplements & Other Industries Is Causing Antarctica Ecocide: Capitalism Atrocities & SAVE THE WHALES

Using giant industrial factory-ships, seafood companies are literally vacuuming the oceans by sucking up the krill that other marine creatures depend on. Simultaneously, Antarctic ice is melting due to climate change, depleting the krill's ice algae food source. Antarctic krill are under pressure due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change impacts like the loss of sea ice and ocean acidification!

My YouTube video covering the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiZNtf_14xI 

From the fish in your supermarket to the supplements in your health food store, traces of its most important animal are everywhere, hidden in plain sight. Krill, the tiny crustacean at the centre of the Antarctic food web eaten by everything from gentoo penguins to whales, is being targeted by fishing fleets in ever-increasing numbers. It’s turned into fish meal for the world’s industrial salmon farms, into food for livestock and pets, and even transformed to omega-3 supplements for the diet industry, These capitalism activities  have been ravaging Antarctica’s remote, frigid biodiverse waters through overfishing that now more than ever, activists and researchers say, threatens the very base of the food chain and the environment’s sustainability. While krill have long been used in aquaculture to fatten farm fish like salmon and in pet food, it wasn’t until a decade ago when krill oil started becoming a gold rush for the dietary supplement industry. Marketed as a superior and sustainable alternative to fish oil, Antarctic krill products are touted as more effective in delivering omega-3 fatty acids than fish oil, which has been linked to improved heart and brain health. However, according to critics, the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest agency responsible for biomedical and public health research, omega-3 supplements haven’t been shown to reduce the risk of heart problems. The multi-billion dietary supplement industry is feeding on the claims, with some of the hundreds of manufactures selling their krill products to consumers boasting that “we only use superior sourced krill that is harvested in the waters of Antarctica” while others promise that krill is “sustainably harvested from pristine waters…” But for all the greenwashing claims of sustainability, the rise in demand has seen quotas reached with alarming speed. Krill in Antarctica has been harvested by about a dozen super bottom trawlers These massive vessels are floating factories! 4 juvenile humpback whales were entangled by a Norwegian krill boat in 2021 and 2022. Moreover, while the end of commercial whaling has allowed populations to rebound, a new study by the University of California, Santa Cruz found that pregnancy rates among humpback whales in Antarctica have been falling sharply -possibly to a lack of krill, their main prey. Chinstrap penguins and fur seals face similar stresses. A hungry whale eats a lot of krill. It’s estimated that an adult Antarctic blue whale requires about 4.2 tonnes of krill per day, with fin whales consuming only marginally less. The numbers are staggering, Dr Reisenger explained. ‘Before being decimated by commercial whaling, large whales consumed about 430 million tonnes of krill per year in the Southern Ocean.’ 

Several scientists have been warning that stricter controls must be put in place so krill can continue its vital role as a buffer against climate change and sustenance for whales, penguins and seals. Krill, according to new research published by the World Wildlife Fund, remove as much as 23 megatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. That’s the equivalent of taking off the road five million cars every year. Two recent studies reported that Antarctic krill ingest various types of microplastics, especially fibers from clothing and other textiles. These findings emphasize how our plastic use impacts even seemingly remote environments. “Even the polar environment is not free of microplastic pollution,” Scientists have previously detected microplastics in hundreds of marine animals, including crustaceans, worms, fish, sea turtles, and seals. And they have found plastic-ingesting animals around the world, from the Northern Atlantic to coastal Argentina to the South China Sea. But because of the relative isolation of the Southern Ocean, Jin says, it was unclear to what degree Antarctic species would be impacted as well. Compared with other regions, Jin writes, the Antarctic is “a relatively clean area with very limited influence by human activities.” A 2019 study estimated that surface waters near the Antarctic Peninsula had, on average, around 1,800 plastic pieces per square kilometer. The scientists could not identify the exact origins of the microplastics that ended up inside the krill and salps they collected. Both teams point to fishing gear and laundry use by research, commercial fishing, and tourism operations in the Antarctic as potential local sources of plastic pollution. New research shows that increased levels of plastic pollution could reduce the ability of them to help take CO2 from the atmosphere by 27%, ETC!!!