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This chapter discusses what is meant by, and what is involved in, fisheries management. Topics covered include the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Compliance Agreement, FAO's Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and International Plans of Action, regional fisheries management organizations, and importing environmental issues into fisheries management.

In this chapter, the international ramifications of capture fisheries management are examined, with the major focus being on the management internationally shared fish stocks, particularly those fish stocks crossing the boundary of the coastal state EEZ. The theory of games is found to be an essential tool of analysis, with the consequence that the economics of the management of these internationally shared resources is seen to be a blend of the economics of fisheries management examined up to this point and game theory. The policy implications of the forgoing economics are then discussed in detail. The chapter then goes on to examine a second aspect of the economics international fisheries management, namely that of the relations between coastal states and so called distant water fishing states. The chapter concludes by discussing the key links between the management of capture fishery resources at the national/regional level and at the international level.

High seas fishery for cod in the Barents Sea Loophole, a piece of international waters surrounded by the EEZs of Norway and Russia is the main focus of this chapter. Throughout most of the 1990s, vessels from a number of states targeted cod in this high seas without allocated quotas by the regional management regime. This chapter explores the interplay between efforts to accommodate this straddling stock problem within the existing regional framework and the partially parallel evolvement of the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement. In addition to the discussion of the regional regime and its adaptation to the Loophole challenge, the extent to which this specific regional dispute influenced state positions and outcomes at the New York negotiations is examined including the likely impact of the Fish Stocks Agreement on effective management of the Loophole fishery.

This chapter begins with an assessment of the situation and the significance of the Sea of Okhotsk fisheries. It addresses the unilateral measures taken by the Russian Federation regarding fisheries in the Sea of Okhotsk and the developments involving the Russian Federation and the interested states. Also, the Russian submissions concerning the regime of straddling stocks made during the Fish Stocks Conference are analysed and compared to the subsequent negotiating texts and the Fish Stocks Agreement. Further, the legal arguments of the Russian Federation are evaluated against the relevant rules of international law. The chapter concludes by identifying the linkages of the regime for fisheries in the Sea of Okhotsk to other regimes and suggests how this regime may further develop.

Since the conclusion of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) more than 20 years ago, the fishing industry has changed dramatically. New technologies have increased fishing vessel efficiency and capacity, and have provided access to previously remote fish stocks. This has created three major challenges to the legal regime for high seas fisheries under the LOSC: declining fish stocks in the high seas due to overfishing, growing biodiversity concerns, and proliferation of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities such as overfishing. In the face of these challenges, the framework of the LOSC may be sound but insufficient. These challenges have revealed the weaknesses of the LOSC regime, which relies on the effectiveness of regional fisheries management organisations and the voluntary compliance of flag states to ensure conservation and management of living resources in the high seas.

The use of ‘flags of convenience’ has been a common problem in international law because of the problems it poses on international navigation, application of international standards, and protection to seafarers. This chapter however, focuses on its recent manifestation on unauthorized fishing in areas of the high seas that are governed by regional fisheries conservation and management arrangements. Certain legal aspects have risen in the 1990s that offered some innovative approaches in dealing with the flags of convenience problem specifically related to the conservation and management of international fisheries. This chapter highlights two important global agreements: the 1993 FAO Compliance and the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement. This chapter also aims to provide an overview of the developments that occurred on the new methods for law enforcement and control of foreign fishing vessels at both regional and global levels to solve the flags of convenience problem.

The evolution of a governance system for the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea Doughnut Hole is laid out in this chapter. It reviews the background and elements of the 1994 Convention on the Conservation and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central Bering Sea (‘the Convention’), a treaty that the six nations involved formatted to manage the pollock fishery of the Doughnut Hole. The relationship of the Convention to other developments in the international law of fisheries, particularly the Fish Stocks Agreement is also analysed in this chapter.

The emergence of the precautionary principle in international environmental policy has been one of the most remarkable developments of the last decade, and arguably one of the most significant in the emergence of the new discipline of environmental law itself. This chapter reviews the evolution of the precautionary principle and examines the way in which the principle was reflected in the instruments to emerge from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. It addresses the way in which it has been incorporated into marine environmental regimes since then, using as an extended example the 1995 UN Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, which specifically requires the use of environmental concerns, including the precautionary approach in the management of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks.

In many parts of the world, there continues to be various serious international disputes that are not amenable to negotiated solutions. Besides the improvements in the policing of fishing vessels and the need to ensure long-term sustainability of stocks, the availability of adequate compulsory procedures for resolving intractable disputes remains one of the main challenges of contemporary fishing law. This chapter aims to examine how far the international community has met this challenge. It begins by presenting the evolution of compulsory jurisdiction over fisheries disputes. The UNCLOS dispute settlement scheme and the settlement of disputes under the Fish Stocks Agreement are among the policies that are demonstrated in this chapter. Also, it cites several immense problems in using existing law to ensure that disputes relating to straddling fish stocks will if necessary be resolved by an independent third party.

This chapter examines the extent to which the developing law of high seas fisheries, such as the Fish Stocks Agreement and the FAO Compliance Agreement of 1993, prepares the ground for compliance with future high seas regulations on the part of individual fishermen. It focuses on the target group of individual fisheries management, the fishermen, or the vessels under their charge. However, in the discussions of the United Nations Conference on Straddling Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, one of the most controversial issues was the extent to which a fishing vessel should be subject to the enforcement of other states than the flag state when fishing in high seas regions. In this chapter, possible compliance-inducing elements of the agreements as well as the issues of enforcement and regime linkages between the two agreements and other global and regional arrangements are discussed.

This chapter exploits the previous chapter's demographic model to make impact assessment of fishing and calculate fisheries reference points for fish stocks with asymptotic sizes of 10 g, 333 g, and 10 kg. The three asymptotic sizes span the variation in fish life histories from small and short-lived forage fish species, such as sardine or sprat; to small pelagic fish, such as herring or mackerel; to large demersal species, such as cod or saithe. When fishing is added to the demographic model, the model has to be solved numerically. To complement the numerical results, the chapter first develops a very simplified analytical model. It then goes on to formulate a complete theoretical framework that can be applied to make ecological impact assessments of fishing a single stock.

The maximum sustainable yield (MSY) became part of American foreign and domestic policy in 1949, when it was formally adopted by the State Department as the goal of American fisheries policy. It is described as a step forward in fish conservation, in which harvest must be managed to avoid the decline of fish stocks. The goal of this book is to examine the political history of maximum sustainable yield and its role in the management of harvest from the oceans.

This chapter considers the dispute settlement provisions of the 1995 Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish. The Agreement is the outcome of an initiative of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and is, at the same time, a continuation of the work of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. The Agreement has made a choice for compulsory dispute settlement entailing binding decisions and has extended it to fisheries agreements which may have no provisions for the settlement of disputes. The usual approach of conventions for the protection of the environment, which stresses more the prevention and management of disputes than their solution by binding decisions, has not been followed.

This chapter provides some context on the overall themes and theory of this volume. Throughout, the theory is applied to relevant problems in fisheries science: impact of fishing on demography, fisheries reference points, evolutionary impact assessments, stock recovery, ecosystem-based fisheries management, and so on, as well as to basic ecological and evolutionary questions. The chapter begins by addressing the motivations for a new theory of fish stocks and fish communities. It also considers what problems such a theory should address and how such a theory can be formulated. From here, the chapter discusses what makes a good theory and the peculiar challenges fish ecology represents.

Recreational Fishing. Recreational fisheries involve far more people than commercial fisheries do in most of the developed countries, and their economic value is often estimated to be larger than that of commercial fisheries. The main objective of most recreational fisheries is the opportunity to fish rather than the number or value of fish caught, and very different management methods are appropriate. Ideally, the total fishing effort should be maximized rather than reduced, to keep costs down as for commercial fisheries. Access to recreational fishing differs greatly around the world and ranges from effectively privatizing fishing opportunity to allowing anyone wishing to fish to do so.

This chapter discusses the roles, responsibilities, and socio-political hierarchies between Taiwanese fishermen at sea. It explores the individual roles onboard a fishing vessel, such as the fishing master, radio operator, and engineman, and their various levels of authority in relation to one another. It then explores the fluctuations of Taiwanese fishing zones during the 1960s, noting the factors of ethnicity, fish stock demands, and personal preferences that influenced geographic trends. It details the risks of crossing into foreign waters and the reasons fishermen opted to do so regardless, which include poaching purposes and taking more direct routes to their destinations. It concludes neighbouring nations increased the punitive measures against straying Taiwanese vessels in order to either repel or extort those aboard.

This chapter calls into question the veracity of stories, often seen in the scientific literature and popular media, describing the collapse of fish stocks and predicting a soon-to-be-seen dramatic decline in food production from the ocean. In fact, detailed scientific analyses suggest that fish stock abundance is globally stable, and much of the decline in fish catch has been due to more stringent management of fisheries in many countries. This has led to a polarization between those who look at abundance trends, and argue that improving fisheries management is the solution, and those who look at catch and argue that fisheries management does not work and marine protected areas are needed. Data clearly support the effectiveness of fisheries management, whereas remarkably little data demonstrates the impact of marine protected areas outside of the closed areas. This chapter argues the actual impacts of MPAs need to be evaluated much more intensively.

After more than 20 years, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) still stands as a massive achievement in the history of codification efforts in international law. This chapter examines the role of the World Bank (WB) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the fund for which it acts both as trustee and as one of the three implementing agencies. The implementation role the LOSC itself seems to envisage for the WB, and the way this has been supplemented by the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA), are discussed. The role and financing capability of the WB itself are also considered, along with the establishment, restructuring, and evolution of the GEF, and the role of international organisations in developing and implementing the LOSC. The chapter concludes by looking at a representative spread of the growing portfolio of projects of both the WB and GEF in the law of the sea area, including marine pollution control and fisheries management.