International Fisheries Management Research Articles

Insights on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Activities by Egyptian Vessels in Neighbouring Countries

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is recognised as one of the largest threats to the sustainability of the world’s fisheries. The fight against IUU fishing activities has recently become a high priority in the international fisheries management agenda. While a number of academic contributions have sought to improve the understanding of the problem, data are still limited, especially in developing countries. In the absence of any information in this regard in Egypt, this contribution is the first attempt to report the available information about cases of Egyptian fishing vessels detained for fishing illegally in neighbouring countries, including the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The highest number of cases was observed in 2015 (7 cases) followed by 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2020 (each with 5 cases). The highest number of detained vessels by far was observed in 2020 (44 vessels) followed by 2015 (19 vessels). Tunisia was the country with the highest number of cases (17 cases) followed by Libya (10 cases), while Somalia detained the highest number of vessels (42 vessels) followed by Libya (22 vessels). The results shed light on the problems that led to this situation, starting with depleted fisheries, a poor monitoring system and a difficult economic situation in the fishing sector.

Governing Open Ocean and Fish Carbon: Perspectives and Opportunities

Marine life plays a vital role in the ocean’s biological pump by sequestering and mediating fluxes of carbon to the deep sea and sea floor. The roles that fish and other marine vertebrates play in the biological pump are increasingly attracting scientific and policy attention. In this paper, we investigated the interest in and possibilities for the international governance of open ocean and fish carbon ecosystem services. We used semi-structured interviews with representatives from environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs), policy makers, and policy experts, along with an exploratory review of grey and peer-reviewed literature to: 1) trace the pathway of important milestones, key actors, and their strategies to influence governance of ocean carbon, and, 2) investigate which frameworks might be used to govern open ocean and fish carbon. Strategies of key actors to direct attention to open ocean and fish carbon included collaborating with scientists, organising side events at climate and biodiversity negotiations and seminars to engage policy makers, as well as educational campaigns directed to the public and policy makers about the co-benefits of open ocean and fish carbon. While we found a strong focus of ENGO activities related to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, we also found strong opposition against active governance of open ocean and fish carbon by key Intergovernmental actors in this forum. Opposition stems from a lack of scientific information on how long open ocean and fish carbon is stored, difficulties in attributing carbon flows with individual countries mitigation actions, and fewer perceived co-benefits (e.g. coastal protection in the case of coastal blue carbon) for coastal communities. More viable routes for the future governance of open ocean and fish carbon may lie in international fisheries management and in current negotiations of a treaty for biodiversity conservation in the high seas.

Incorporation of Fisheries Policy into Regional Blocs?—Lessons from the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy

As globalization is facing increasing challenges, regionalization demonstrates the potential to effectively address many transboundary issues. Current international fisheries management has attracted criticisms, among which the poor incentives for countries to attend and comply with the rules are notable. This paper aims to explore whether the incorporation of fisheries policies into regional economic blocs can be a solution to improve cross-border fisheries management. The development, problems, and future of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) of the European Union are explored in detail. This paper concludes that the evolution and implementation of the CFP provide some precious lessons for the world. An appropriately designed regional fisheries scheme would help to create incentives for countries to participate in regional regimes and improve their fisheries management. Economic incentives, a good institutional design, and financial and scientific support are critical factors in favor of adopting common fisheries policies under regional economic frameworks.

Why do fisheries management institutions circumvent precautionary guidelines?

The precautionary approach to fisheries management is a central strategy by which domestic and international fisheries management institutions pursue sustainable resource development. Yet fisheries management institutions have often allocated quota for commercial species in direct contradiction of established precautionary guidelines. We use Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)'s recent allocation of quota for northern cod (Gadus morhua) while the stock is in the critical zone of the institution's precautionary approach as a case study to ask: why do fisheries management institutions circumvent precautionary guidelines? Our results reveal three core tensions characterizing the use of the precautionary approach: stakeholders and rightsholders (1) disagree on the appropriateness and accuracy of the data inputs used to operationalize the precautionary approach, (2) rely on different metrics to gauge risk associated with fishing a stock in the critical zone, and (3) hold competing views concerning what constitutes an appropriate epistemological foundation for the precautionary approach. Our analysis suggests these differing interpretations of precaution and the design of the precautionary approach are central factors explaining why resource allocation decisions differ from precautionary guidelines. We conclude that decisions to allocate quota in contradiction of precautionary guidelines are best explained by stakeholders and rightsholders reframing how decision-makers gauge risk associated with resource exploitation.

A constructive critique of the World Trade Organization draft agreement on harmful fisheries subsidies

November 2021 could see members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) reach an agreement to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies, culminating over 20 years of negotiation and discussion. This commentary highlights strengths and places where the current draft text can be improved to ensure the agreement truly contributes to sustainable and equitable fisheries. Overall, conditionalities and exemptions are better streamlined and defined, time periods to enter into compliance are allowed yet reasonably short, types of subsidies to be particularly avoided are clearly noted, and appropriate emphasis is placed on reducing impacts from distant-water and transboundary fishing fleets. Key places for improvement relate to unspecific language on supporting fisher incomes, the uniform handling of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fisheries (IUU), and transparency in distant water fisheries, issues partly stemming from historical definitions that are useful for some fisheries but may not capture the complexity of others. Capacity-enhancing subsidies should be avoided, and it is important to avoid further negative impacts on marginalized fisher populations. Given the importance of reaching an agreement without further delay, we urge members to proactively and inclusively formalize their fishing definitions and practices to prevent inequitable outcomes for vulnerable fishers during the implementation stage of a new agreement. A WTO agreement to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies is an opportunity to catalyze the design and funding of improved and cooperative national and international fisheries policy and management strategies, to the benefit of fishers, global seafood production, and indeed all who hold relationships with our oceans.

Genomic Assessment of Global Population Structure in a Highly Migratory and Habitat Versatile Apex Predator, the Tiger Shark (Galeocerdo cuvier).

Understanding the population dynamics of highly mobile, widely distributed, oceanic sharks, many of which are overexploited, is necessary to aid their conservation management. We investigated the global population genomics of tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), a circumglobally distributed, apex predator displaying remarkable behavioral versatility in its diet, habitat use (near coastal, coral reef, pelagic), and individual movement patterns (spatially resident to long-distance migrations). We genotyped 242 tiger sharks from 10 globally distributed locations at more than 2000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Although this species often conducts massive distance migrations, the data show strong genetic differentiation at both neutral (FST = 0.125-0.144) and candidate outlier loci (FST = 0.570-0.761) between western Atlantic and Indo-Pacific sharks, suggesting the potential for adaptation to the environments specific to these oceanic regions. Within these regions, there was mixed support for population differentiation between northern and southern hemispheres in the western Atlantic, and none for structure within the Indian Ocean. Notably, the results demonstrate a low level of population differentiation of tiger sharks from the remote Hawaiian archipelago compared with sharks from the Indian Ocean (FST = 0.003-0.005, P < 0.01). Given concerns about biodiversity loss and marine ecosystem impacts caused by overfishing of oceanic sharks in the midst of rapid environmental change, our results suggest it imperative that international fishery management prioritize conservation of the evolutionary potential of the highly genetically differentiated Atlantic and Indo-Pacific populations of this unique apex predator. Furthermore, we suggest targeted management attention to tiger sharks in the Hawaiian archipelago based on a precautionary biodiversity conservation perspective.

Combining Ecosystem and Single-Species Modeling to Provide Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management Advice Within Current Management Systems

Although many countries have formally committed to Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM), actual progress toward these goals has been slow. This paper presents two independent case studies that have combined strategic advice from ecosystem modeling with the tactical advice of single-species assessment models to provide practical ecosystem-based management advice. With this approach, stock status, reference points, and initial target F are computed from a single-species model, then an ecosystem model rescales the target F according to ecosystem indicators without crossing pre-calculated single-species precautionary limits. Finally, the single-species model computes the quota advice from the rescaled target F, termed here Feco. Such a methodology incorporates both the detailed population reconstructions of the single-species model and the broader ecosystem perspective from ecosystem-based modeling, and fits into existing management schemes. The advocated method has arisen from independent work on EBFM in two international fisheries management systems: (1) Atlantic menhaden in the United States and (2) the multi species fisheries of the Irish Sea, in the Celtic Seas ecoregion. In the Atlantic menhaden example, the objective was to develop ecological reference points (ERPs) that account for the effect of menhaden harvest on predator populations and the tradeoffs associated with forage fish management. In the Irish Sea, the objective was to account for ecosystem variability when setting quotas for the individual target species. These two exercises were aimed at different management needs, but both arrived at a process of adjusting the target F used within the current single-species management. Although the approach has limitations, it represents a practical step toward EBFM, which can be adapted to a range of ecosystem objectives and applied within current management systems.

Measuring fisheries management performance

Abstract How do we assess the performance of national and international fisheries management organizations? Many organizations produce measures of the extent of overfishing, typically classifying individual stocks as overfished if they are below some biomass threshold. Most agencies then report their overall status (i.e. percentage overfished, fully exploited, etc.) by giving equal weight to all stocks, regardless of stock size or potential yield. We review the range of indices used to assess overfishing levels and apply them to the data from US fisheries to show how they depict very different performance of fisheries. Given that overfishing is a concept imbedded in the maximization of long-term harvest, we evaluate how well these indices reflect the extent to which fisheries have maximized sustainable yield. Indices that are weighted by the potential yield of the stock much better reflect the regional performance of fisheries but are still limited by the arbitrary use of a threshold abundance. For the United States, weighting by maximum sustainable yield or value suggests that the losses from overfishing are less than existing methods using equal weighting and that underfishing is much more common than overfishing.

International Management of Fishery in the Black Sea: Yesterday, Present and Tomorrow

The paper provides geographic and biological information on fisheries in the Black Sea, describes the international legal regime of the Black sea. The norms of international regional agreements on fisheries in the Black sea are analyzed in detail. Special attention is paid to the European Union fishery regulations in the Black Sea. The role and activities of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean in terms of the fisheries management in the Black Sea are analyzed in detail. The results of the High-Level Conference on the Joint Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea (May 2019, Bucharest) were reviewed. The recommendations for improving international legal fisheries management in this sea are made.

Factors influencing the performance of regional fisheries management organizations

A key challenge for humanity is to conserve and sustainably use the earth's oceans and marine resources as millions of people rely on fish for food, income, and well-being. Regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) are key players in international fisheries management. However, despite their importance, the ability of these institutions to manage fisheries in a sustainable way and to prevent overfishing has often been questioned. This article aims to provide an overview of issues which impact the RFMOs performance. We conducted an extensive literature review to summarize issues which were mentioned in the peer-reviewed literature. Moreover, we also discuss the impact of new international agreements and processes, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the currently negotiated agreement for biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, due to the overlap of themes such as biodiversity protection and sustainable fisheries management. We identified 17 issues which were mentioned in the literature, with the most frequent ones being precautionary and ecosystem approach and decision-making. RFMOs are slowly making progress regarding these issues and some organizations are already applying good practices. This highlights the importance of RFMOs to learn from each other. While the agreement for biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction might potentially impact RFMOs and speed up to the process of applying best practices, the sustainable development goals are less likely to influence RFMOs.

Environmental market design for large-scale marine conservation

It is commonly agreed that marine conservation should expand considerably around the world. However, most countries have not yet implemented large-scale no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). When a country closes a large fraction of its waters to fishing, it stands to lose a considerable level of fishery revenue. Although biodiversity and spillover fishing benefits may far exceed these losses, benefits from large-scale MPAs typically accrue to other countries or to the high seas. Here, to overcome this dilemma, we simulate and test an international fisheries management scheme with transferable fishing rights that incentivizes, rather than hinders, large-scale marine conservation. By combining a bioeconomic model of cross-country trading of fishing rights with vessel-level tracking data before and after a large-scale conservation action is implemented, we show that transferable fishing rights and a biomass-based allocation rule are pivotal to incentivize conservation under this market-based setting. Our work focuses on the Vessel Day Scheme (VDS)—an environmental market that is employed by the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (a group of nine Pacific Island nations) to manage their tuna fisheries—and areas in which large-scale conservation interventions have taken place. Overall, these results provide a template for how to incentivize countries to engage in large-scale marine conservation within a market-based setting. An international arrangement of transferable fishing rights and biomass-based allocation can incentivize establishing Marine Protected Areas while promoting the economy.

Fisheries and ABNJ: Advancing and Enhancing Cooperation

It is increasingly clear that the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is a major unfinished agenda of the LOSC. In December 2017, the UNGA initiated an intergovernmental conference to negotiate an implementation agreement for ABNJ. It is expected that over the course of four sessions between September 2018 and 2020 the text of this agreement will be agreed, and the most significant of LOSC’s unfinished agendas be resolved. This paper provides new insights into how this major new agreement can and should advance international fisheries management. Part 2 evaluates the case for and against the inclusion of fisheries. It advocates the inclusion of fisheries within the ABNJ Agreement, both directly and indirectly. Although the question of inclusion of fisheries is essentially a political question, this outcome is desirable from a conservation perspective. It is also supported by existing legal rules and institutions. Given the importance of including fisheries, the real focus of our efforts should not be on why, but rather how fisheries are included in the new agreement. As the review of developments towards an ABNJ Agreement shows in Part 3, there are some clear pointers to how fisheries can be included. Yet there are also some potential impediments to be overcome. Political objections aside, these principally concern the risks of conflicting legal regimes as reflected in the core requirement that the new agreement ‘should not undermine existing relevant legal instruments and frameworks and relevant global, regional and sectoral bodies’. This is significant because fisheries management is perhaps the principal area where existing regimes have developed well-established, if not comprehensive, mandates. In Part 4, three key ways of addressing these concerns are set out: conflicts and compatibility clauses, the use of general principles, and developing mechanisms for enhanced cooperation. Each contributes to a more integrated governance regime without threatening existing mandates and institutions. This preserves the necessary balances inherent in the law of the sea whilst enabling advances through cooperation. This will counter the traditional freedom bias that impedes sustainable fishing in ABNJ.

A Multi Criteria Assessment Method for Identifying Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems in the North-East Atlantic

In international fisheries management, scientific advice on the presence of ‘Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems’ (VMEs) per United Nations resolutions, has generally used qualitative assessments based on expert judgement of the occurrence of indicator taxa such as cold-water corals and sponges. Use of expert judgement alone can be criticised for inconsistency and sometimes a lack of transparency; therefore, development of robust and repeatable numeric methods to detect the presence of VMEs would be advantageous. Here, we present a multi-criteria assessment (MCA) method to evaluate how likely a given area of seafloor represents a VME. The MCA is a taxa-dependent spatial method that accounts for both the quantity and data quality available. This was applied to a database of records of VMEs built, held and compiled by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). A VME index was generated which ranged from 1.51 to 4.52, with 5.0 being reserved for confirmed VME habitats. An index of confidence was also computed that ranged from 0.0 to 0.75, with 1 being reserved for those confirmed VME habitats. Overall the MCA captured the important elements of the ICES VME database and provided a simplified, spatially aggregated and weighted estimate of how likely a given area is to contain VMEs. The associated estimate of confidence gave an indication of how uncertain that assessment was for the same given area. This methodology provides a more systematic and standardised approach for assessing the likelihood of presence of VMEs in the North-East Atlantic.

Domestic sources of international fisheries diplomacy: A framework for analysis

Many international commercial fish stocks are threatened with depletion; in some cases they are already badly depleted. Through Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), member countries are committed in principle to sustainable and scientific management of these fisheries. However, in practice, national policies toward international fisheries vary greatly across countries, from those that in practice support sustainable management to those that seem implicitly committed to fishing as much as possible in the short term. There has to this point been little comparative work looking systematically at the differences in international fisheries policies across countries, despite the importance to the effective management of international fisheries of understanding these differences. This article is an effort to address this lacuna in the literature, by creating a framework for comparing the domestic sources of differing international fisheries policies across countries. The proposed analytical framework looks at four types of differences across countries to explain variation in international fisheries policies, derived from the existing literature: fleet substitutability, the structure of the fishing industry in a state, regulatory capture, and environmental NGOs. The framework has significant potential to explain state positions in RFMOs negotiations. It may also contribute to further understanding of the general relationship between international negotiations and domestic politics.

International fisheries agreements and non-consumptive values

The management of internationally shared fish stocks is a major economic, environmental and political issue. According to international law, these resources should be managed cooperatively under international fisheries agreements (IFAs). This paper studies the formation and stability of IFAs through a coalition game that accounts for both direct consumptive values (harvesting profits) and non-consumptive values of the fish stock per se. The results show that accounting for non-consumptive values helps conserve the fish stock in that equilibrium fishing efforts are smaller and fish stock larger than without non-consumptive values under all possible coalition scenarios (full, partial and no cooperation). However, considering non-consumptive values does not affect the outcome of the game in terms of the prospects for cooperation: even with substantial non-consumptive benefits, the outcome is full non-cooperation. Hence, the trap of non-cooperation in international fisheries management cannot be overcome simply by explicitly accounting for non-consumptive values within IFAs. It is suggested that strengthening the role of IFAs and limiting the ability of non-member countries to free-ride be further investigated as measures fostering cooperation.

Incorporating Taiwan in International Fisheries Management: The Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement Experience

ABSTRACTThe incorporation of Taiwan into the legal framework of regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) has proven to be challenging. This article reviews RFMO practice in this area in light of the recent experience of the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement (SIOFA) and outlines some of the legal creativity that has provided solutions. Taiwan's participation in RFMOs is essential to the achievement of effective management outcomes. Accordingly, this article argues that today, with relevant international legal obligations and numerous suitable precedents, political considerations should not represent an obstacle to providing for fair and appropriate involvement of Taiwan in RFMOs.

Management strategy evaluation in regional fisheries management organizations − How to promote robust fisheries management in international settings

Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) is a process to develop a management strategy that is robust to uncertainties and appropriately reflects the trade-offs among the management objectives of stakeholders. It is widely recognized as best practice to develop a management strategy for fisheries management and has been implemented in a number of domestic fisheries. In contrast, implementation of MSE in the international fisheries management is limited. In this study, the development of MSE in various (five tuna related and eight other) regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) is reviewed and common features among RFMOs that have been either successful or not so successful are studied, mainly from the viewpoint of a decision-maker. Furthermore, challenges specific to RFMOs to implement MSE are discussed. It is found that the complex nature of the governance by RFMOs as an international institute poses unique challenges for implementing MSE, which is not easy even in much simpler domestic fisheries. In addition to further efforts to improve communication with stakeholders to obtain their understanding and commitment to the MSE process, it is suggested that RFMOs take a more practical approach to advance work on MSE, which is to discuss and decide the elements of MSE such as management objectives, their associated performance indicators and the harvest control rules as a package which includes examples of practical options and their differences in performance, rather than having an initial focus on conceptual aspects such as early clarification of objectives, to improve management as soon as practicable.

International Fisheries Management and Recreational Benefits: The Case of Baltic Salmon

AbstractThis article studies how accounting for the benefits of recreational fisheries affects the formation and stability of an international fisheries agreement (IFA) on the management of Baltic salmon stocks. The interaction between four countries is modelled through a partition function game, under two scenarios. In the first scenario, countries take their participation decision for the IFA based only on the net present value of profits from commercial fisheries. In the second scenario, the net present value of the recreational benefits from angling is also considered. The results show that accounting for recreational benefits leads to the formation of the grand coalition, whereas only partial cooperation occurs when payoffs are confined to profits from commercial fisheries.

Transboundary movements, unmonitored fishing mortality, and ineffective international fisheries management pose risks for pelagic sharks in the Northwest Atlantic

The shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), porbeagle (Lamna nasus), and blue shark (Prionace glauca) are three frequently caught shark species in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Satellite tagging studies show that all three species range widely across many national boundaries but spend up to 92% of their time on the high seas, where they are largely unregulated and unmonitored. All are caught in large numbers by swordfish and tuna fishing fleets from a large number of nations, usually unintentionally, and all are unproductive by fish standards, which makes them particularly sensitive to fishing pressure. Landing statistics that grossly underrepresent actual catches, unreported discards that often exceed landings, and high discard mortality rates are threats to the populations and roadblocks to useful population monitoring. The influence of these threats is greatly magnified by inattention and ineffective management from the responsible management agency, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), whose prime focus is the more valuable swordfish and tuna stocks. Although practical management options are available, none will be possible if organizations like ICCAT continue to treat sharks like pests.

SoFISHticated policy – social perspectives on the fish conflict in the Northeast Atlantic

Ecosystem changes currently question the traditional allocation of fishing rights and quotas in the fishery of Northeast Atlantic mackerel and Norwegian spring-spawning herring in the Northeast Atlantic. Variability in the distribution of these highly migratory species escalated in a political conflict between member states of the European Union, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway, which is a driving force for unsustainable fishery. The aim of this paper is to investigate this conflict by outlining the social understandings of diverse stakeholders by using the Q methodology. The method reduced the complexity of numerous opinions, detected four distinct perspectives and simultaneously categorised the participating stakeholders. Although the perspectives differ in various elements, the protection of economic interests seems to dominate over the quest for sustainability. The call of all stakeholders in this study to clarify the fishing rights in the Northeast Atlantic reveals a clear deficiency of the current international fishery management in handling abrupt ecological changes and the necessity to acknowledge this as a complex adaptive system.