Southern Powell Island and adjacent islands, South Orkney Islands

Agreed in 2009 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), this became the first marine protected area on the high seas — that is, outside the jurisdictional waters of any country — ever declared, a landmark in international environmental law that set the precedent for later agreements protecting international waters elsewhere in the world. It protects an area of submarine continental shelf of great biological productivity, which supports enormous concentrations of Antarctic krill, the base of the whole Southern Ocean food chain and the foundation on which practically every emblematic species of the region depends, directly or indirectly.