Krill: The invention of a global resource in the long 1970s

Krill, a little shrimp best known as a food source for whales and seals, occupies a central role in the food chain of the oceans. In the 1970s it gained increased attention as a potential food source for humans as well. With its supposedly inexhaustible amounts of biomass, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) seemed to be a feasible alternative to fish, whose populations were suffering from overharvesting, and promised to provide enough protein for a growing world population at a time when the limits to growth were an issue of great political concern. Krill is a key object that brings together different actors from science, politics, and industry in a global struggle for living resources. There were many scientific and especially technical questions to be solved concerning the harvesting and processing of krill that will be addressed in this paper. I will argue that there were biological as well as cultural limits to these far-reaching technocratic visions that were not fully taken into account by fisheries experts in the 1970s.