Failing the high seas: A global evaluation of regional fisheries management organizations

Abstract

Regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) collectively manage the largest distinct area of the world, the high seas, but their effectiveness in conserving the fish stocks therein has been questioned lately, as many stocks have declined. This study quantitatively assesses the effectiveness of the world's 18 RFMOs, based on a two-tiered approach, concentrating first on their performance ‘on paper’ and secondly, in practice. The former was determined by assessing how well RFMOs scored against 26 criteria that together reflect current RFMO best practices. The latter assessment referenced the current state of the stocks RFMOs manage, through biomass and fishing mortality reference points and biomass trends through time. Results show low performance of RFMOs for both assessments, i.e., average scores of 57% and 49%, respectively. The latter result is emphasized by findings that reflect two-thirds of stocks fished on the high seas and under RFMO management are either depleted or overexploited. Findings also indicate that there is no connection between the two sets of scores, suggesting a disparity between organization intent and action.

Introduction

Close to 60% of the oceans are outside national jurisdiction, i.e., beyond the 200 nm mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of coastal countries, and thus, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [1], belong to the ‘high seas’ [2]. Despite covering the majority of oceans, the high seas have, until relatively recently, been inaccessible to fishers: vast, rough, and far from coasts, fishers did not have the vessels or gear to exploit these areas.

Since the mid-20th century, however, progress in fishing technology (freezers, sonar, GPS) and cheap fossil fuel have allowed fishers to exploit the high seas, from which catches have thus increased [3], [4]. More dangerous and expensive than coastal fishing, fishing on the high seas is driven by its large rewards: toothfish, tuna, sharks, and certain billfish are all top predator fish of extremely high value [5], [6], [7], [8]. In the 1950s, catch from the high seas amounted to under two million tonnes; in 2006, this had grown to over ten million tonnes [9]. As a result, the fraction of the global marine catch originating from the high seas (as opposed to within EEZs) increased from 9% in 1950 to 15% in 2003 (see www.seaaroundus.org; catch decreases within EEZs also contributed to this, but to a lesser extent).

But who manages the high seas? Steeped in the antiquated dogma of Hugo Grotius’ ‘The Free Sea’ from the early 17th century, fishers have long considered the high seas as open-access, meaning anyone and everyone had rights to fish there. This perception, however, is obsolete today: regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) are currently the only legally mandated fisheries management bodies on the high seas, and countries’ commercial fishing fleets must abide by RFMO regulations in order to fish in these areas, as decreed by the 1995 Straddling Fish Stocks Agreement [10]. In other words, ‘The Free Sea’ is no more [11].

Almost all of the global high seas are now covered by at least one RFMO (Fig. 1). While more RFMOs are slated to come into existence soon, the effectiveness of current RFMOs has never been comprehensively assessed, despite indications that the decline of many high seas fish stocks [12] may be attributed to weaknesses within RFMOs themselves [13]. Indeed, the “ability of RFOs to be ‘vehicles of good governance’ to secure sustainable management has to be proven” [14]. This contribution addresses these concerns.

Here, the global evaluation on the effectiveness of RFMOs is based on a two-tiered system [15]: (1) in theory (or ‘on paper’), i.e., how well RFMOs meet standards as set by Lodge et al. [16] and as measured by the comprehensiveness of available information; and (2) in practice, i.e., how well the stocks under RFMO management do, as measured by current abundance (biomass) trends of managed stocks, and supported by trends through time.