# Are Antarctic Krill Edible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 5, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-antarctic-krill-edible/297886 "2005-04-05T19:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-antarctic-krill-edible/297886/1 "2005-04-05T19:15:20Z")
For those of you who don’t know, the antarctic krill is a shrip-like crustacean, who breed in huge numbrs in the Southern Ocean. Their biomass is hug-they are the primary food supply for whales and many species of birds and fish. Years ago, I read about an attempt to harvest the krill-supposedly, you could fish the southern oceans for years, and never run out ofthese cratures. Anyway, do they taste good (to humans)? And, has anyone tried to fish them commercially? I don’t ever recall seeing krill on sale at my local fish market! ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-antarctic-krill-edible/297886/2 "2005-04-05T19:19:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Estimates of krill abundance in the Southern Ocean made in the 1960s, suggest a sustainable krill harvest of around 150million tonnes a year. This astronomical figure is put into perspective, when one considers that less than one hundred million tonnes of all species of fish and shellfish are currently harvested from the oceans of the world each year. Indeed, the biomass of this one species may be the largest of any multi-cellular animal species on the planet. > > – snip – > > Commercial krill fishing began in the early 1970s, the current catch is a little under 100,000 tonnes a year. Krill are caught by large freezer trawlers and processed on board into products for human consumption, farmed fish and sport fishing bait. > > The prospect of a free-for-all fishery for Antarctic krill led to the signing of a unique fishing treaty in 1981. This is the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, designed to protect the Antarctic ecosystem from the consequences of a rapidly expanding krill fishery and to aid recovery of the great whales and some of the overexploited species of fish. Source: [http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=1456](http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=1456) Tastes like chicken? ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2005, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-antarctic-krill-edible/297886/3 "2005-04-05T20:21:23Z")
I’ve read (I believe that it was in a National Geographic) that fresh krill taste fine, but when they are frozen and then thawed they turn into a disgusting, fishy-smelling goop. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-antarctic-krill-edible/297886/4 "2005-04-05T20:23:52Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > Tastes like chicken? Probably tastes more like the [Chilean Sea Bass](http://www.asoc.org/Press/Fisheries/Pirates/Pillage%20and%20piracy.htm). It was “discovered” comercially in Antarctic waters in the 1980s. Scientists (paid by the fish industry) said there was an infinite supply. Today it’s nearly exticnt due to overfishing. Ecological data gathered in the 60’s probably comes laden with all sorts of assumption (the main one being that sea life breeds just as quickly in the frigid Southern Ocean as it does off the coast of Florida. It doesn’t)