The objective for this research was two-fold: (i) to provide updated estimates of the biomass and distribution of krill in the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) Statistical Area 48, and (ii) to develop knowledge on the marine environment essential for the implementation of an adaptive management system for Antarctic krill. Survey design followed the transects of the CCAMLR 2000 Krill Synoptic Survey of Area 48 and of national surveys performed in the South Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean by the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The survey also focused on high krill-density areas and employed state-of-the art methods and technology. The future management system will need standardised acoustic data from fishing vessels to be collected, processed and reported in near real-time as a measure of the available prey field. This information can be integrated with finer-scale knowledge of krill predator feeding strategies and updated through specific scientific studies at regular (multi-year) intervals. To aid such implementation and to encourage the development of future management tools, the survey took place during the austral summer of 2018/19. The work was coordinated by Norway and involved collaborative international efforts of six survey vessels provided by the Association of Responsible Krill harvesting companies and Aker BioMarine AS, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. This paper reports on the main research priorities and data collection performed on board the Norwegian research vessel Kronprins Haakon in January and February 2019, and the land-based predator work carried out between November 2018 and February 2019.