New Zealand and 24 other nations will meet in Hobart next month to consider a proposed network of marine protected areas in the Ross Sea and in the waters around East Antarctica.
Conservationists here have previously called for the waters around Antarctica to be protected in a network of large-scale, permanent marine protected areas.
The Southern Ocean provides homes for whales, seals, albatrosses and penguins, while also supporting globally important fisheries and helping to regulate the global climate.
The meeting comes as the World Wildlife Fund releases an emergency report saying humans are mismanaging oceans globally to the brink of collapse, and that nearly half of the world's marine mammals, birds, reptiles and fish have been lost in a single generation.
