The latest bid for a new marine-protected area in eastern Antarctic waters has failed at the annual conference of an international research group in Hobart.

The meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Hobart went late into the night on Friday, but failed to deliver the outcome conservationists were hoping for.

Australia and the European Union had been calling for a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in east Antarctica since 2010.

The east Antarctica Marine Protected Area proposal involves measures to provide and protect a sanctuary for key feeding and breeding areas for many species.

Over the years, the proposal has been scaled back from an initial seven areas covering 1.9 million square kilometres, to three areas covering 1 million square kilometres of ocean.

The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) director Claire Christian said the proposal failed to win the required consensus at the latest annual meeting.

Scientists still hold out hopes for new protection areas. ( Supplied: Ida Kubiszewski )

"We're very disappointed, because we've been working to get a network of marine protected areas in the southern ocean for several years now," she said.

"There have been changes made to accommodate various opinions of different countries, and we're really unhappy that after all of that work that we still couldn't reach an agreement."

She said it showed a lack of leadership.

"Precaution has been the basis of governance in the Southern Ocean since [the CCMALR] treaty was signed," she explained.

"The best way to be precautionary is to set aside representative areas that protect biodiversity — provide areas for scientific study and reference — and this would be the most comprehensive way to do it.

"It really is a bad sign that CCAMLR are not able to demonstrate that kind of leadership this year, especially on issues that are so important."

Climate change research to suffer

ASOC said in a statement that progress was also prevented on an initiative to organise the commission's response to climate change.

Ms Christian said climate change had contributed to the Antarctic environment changing rapidly "in ways we don't understand", and MPAs could help with research and study.

"They [MPAs] provide a nice control to compare and contrast with areas where things like fishing and intensive human activity are happening," she said.

"The ice is changing, water temperature is changing, wind is changing, everything that affects how animals in Antarctica live is changing very rapidly ... so it's important to provide areas where there is less stress on the environment."

Thousands of Adelie penguin chicks died in Antarctica early this year, prompting conservationists to call for the urgent protection of east Antarctic waters in the build-up to the conference.

Scientists studying a colony of more than 18,000 pairs of Adelie penguins in the French Antarctic territory, Adelie Land, discovered only two chicks had survived at the start of 2017.

The rest of the chicks starved.

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CCMALR expects discussions to continue

CCMALR chair Dr Monde Mayekiso said a revised proposal by Australia, France and other EU countries was the subject of much discussion.

"The revised proposal for east Antarctica was indeed based on several years of robust research and planning," he said.

"Although many of CCAMLR's 25 members considered that the east Antarctic proposal was ready for adoption, there are many complex scientific and geopolitical issues that are bought to bear in these negotiations.

"Consequently, we were not able to achieve consensus to adopt the proposal this year."