The text of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which was adopted at the close of a diplomatic conference at Canberra on 21 May 1980, is reproduced elsewhere in this number of Polar Record (see p 383–95). The aim of this commentary is briefly to describe the purposes which the Convention was intended by its negotiators to fulfil, to indicate how those purposes are reflected in the text of the Convention, and to explain where the Convention will fit in the overall scheme of international Antarctic conservation agreements that have come into being over the last 50 years.