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Collective arrangements for managing ocean fisheries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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Abstract

With the great spread and intensification of marine fisheries exploitation, the traditional fisheries regime of free and open access (part of traditional “freedom of the seas”) has been modified by many regional or stock-related management arrangements, and is now undergoing drastic change through a radical extension of coastal state jurisdictions. This article deals mostly with the development of various regional and stock-related arrangements. After sketching the overall purposes of management, the aiticle details some of the differences among competing states which have delayed or limited management arrangements, or otherwise complicated their development. Issues of allocation may be uppermost for competing interests, discussed here in the context of shifts from undivided to divided catch limits. The regulatory powers of intergovernmental fisheries commissions have generally been quite limited. While fisheries scientists have in some cases performed vital roles in encouraging regional arrangements, their information and advice has been of limited scope and influence in securing more restrictive regulatory regimes. FAO's Committee on Fisheries (COFI) might be called a global fisheries commission, though much of its most important work has related to amimating and supporting arrangements of a regional character. The radical shift outward of national jurisdictions is rearranging fisheries exploitation in most parts of the world. Given the nature of the resource, however, some forms of regional or stock arrangements will still be needed if the overall purposes of management are to be realized.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1975

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References

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2 Sometimes the terms have been used when indicators like catch per unit effort or average size of fish landed fall off considerably, which is likely to happen before total yields turn downward.

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15 Convention for the Establishment of an Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (1949), Article II, paragraph 5. A copy of this convention can be found in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, pp. 170–77. Emphasis added.

16 International Convention for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (1949), Article VIII, paragraph 1. A copy of this convention can be found in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, pp. 150–59. Emphasis added.

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21 In the Eastern Pacific tuna case, decisions in the informal framework were validated by the Commission. On the working of this commission and the associated meetings, see Office of the Assistant Director for International Affairs, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, US Department of the Interior, “Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission” (unpublished, Washington, D.C., 1969)Google Scholar.

22 Serioas problems have been created by the migration of some Alaskan salmon beyond the line initially drawn as the maximum westward extension of “abstention.” These stocks have, therefore, been somewhat exploited by Japanese interests. In the area in question, there is mingling with salmon spawning in Asia.

23 See Tomasevich, Jozo, International Agreements on Conservation of Marine Resources, Food Research Institute Commodity Policy Studies no. 1 (Stanford, Calif.: Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1943), p. 87Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 239, 260–61. Tomasevich also presents other important factors in the delay of salmon regulation.

25 Ibid., p. 165.

26 An international commission to watch over these arrangements and coordinate research was not created until 1957.

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29 For instance, Koers reports that the Salmon Commission held nineteen sessions in 1970. See Koers, pp. 135, 149.

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32 The time period was 90 days for the whaling convention. This is one variable in such procedures, obviously. Other variables would involve, for instance, what happens when an objection is filed. In the whaling case, the effective date of regulations was pushed back another ninety days to give others time to consider objecting. Measures to which some had objected could come into effect for others.

33 Under the old procedure, there had developed “a serious accumulation of proposals, and amendments and reservations to proposals, which had not been fully accepted.” Lucas, Cyril E., “International Fishery Bodies of the North Atlantic,” Law of the Sea Institute, University of Rhode Island, Occasional Paper no. 5 (Kingston, R.I.: 04 1970), p. 19Google Scholar.

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37 Ibid., p. 19. This is from draft articles presented for the General Assembly's consideration.

38 Ibid., p. 19.

39 It has been claimed these provisions were important in clearing the way for the move in the Whaling Commission a few years later to engage outside independent scientific advice, a move discussed below. Herrington, William C., in Discussion in The United Nations and Ocean Management, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the Law of the Sea Institute, June 1970, Alexander, Lewis M. (ed.), (Kingston, R.I.: University of Rhode Island, 1971), p. 70Google Scholar.

40 Article 1, paragraph 2. A copy of this convention can be found in Johnston, pp. 488–95.

41 Herrington has classified the non-ratifiers into four general groups. One group, led by the Soviet Union, objected to the obligatory settlement procedures. A second group, comprised of coastal states desiring wider national jurisdictions, worried that acceptance of the international management aspects of the convention would somehow handicap their jurisdictional aims. The third group was the opposite of the second, perversely, objecting to the special interests of coastal states recognized in the convention. The fourth was comprised of those for whom the convention was not sufficiently salient or who, given its poor record of ratification by others, did not wish to submit themselves to any restrictions it might entail. Herrington, William C., “The Future of the Geneva Convention on Fishing and the Conservation of the Living Resources of the Sea,” in The Future of the Sea's Resources, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Law of the Sea Institute, June 1967, Alexander, Lewis M. (ed.), (Kingston, R.I.: University of Rhode Island, 1968), pp. 62–3Google Scholar.

42 Article: 2. This follows for the most part elaboration agreed upon at the 1955Technical Conference” held by the United Nations at FAO headquarters in RomeGoogle Scholar. See paragraph 18, p. 2 of the Report of the International Technical Conference on the Conservation of the Living Resources of the Sea, 18 04 to 10 05 1955, Rome, United Nations Document A/CONF.10/6Google Scholar.

43 Article 7 and Article 10.

44 Koers, p. 72.

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47 An exception was made for the FAO expert, who was a British national. Holt, the FAO expert involved, tells us that another requirement was that one not be a specialist on whales! Ibid., p. 8.

48 Johnston, pp. 405–09; Small, pp. 196–203; Herrington (1971), p. 70; Holt, p. 8.

49 Johnston, p. 43n. In the decades just before, one finds, it appears, a flowering of the notion that depletion was no t a serious worry and that conservation regulations were therefore unnecessary in sea fisheries in the area. A whole set of British national regulations controlling exploitation of coastal stocks were repealed, for instance, at this time. Johnston tells us (p. 326) that “the redoubtable T. H. Huxley is given much credit for urging repeal of the British fishery restrictions in the 1860s. At the International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883, in delivering the inaugural address, he went further and expressed the opinion that the cod, herring, pilchard, and mackerel fisheries, and probably all the great sea fisheries, were inexhaustible, and that any attempt to regulate these fisheries seemed, from the nature of the case, to be useless.”

50 Herrington, William C. and Kask, John L., “International Conservation Problems, and Solutions in Existing Conventions” in Papers Presented at the International Technical Conference on the Conservation of the Living Resources of the Sea, 18 April–10 May 1955, Rome, United Nations Document A/CONF.10/7 (New York: United Nations, 1956), p. 147Google Scholar.

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53 Lucas, , “International Fishery Bodies of the North Atlantic,” p. 9Google Scholar.

54 At the first General Conference of FAO member-governments, in the fall of 1945, the fisheries committee of the Conference recommended that the organization “explore the possibility of eventually coordinating the activities of these organizations under the auspices of FAO.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Report of the First Session of the Conference (1945), p. 35.

55 The Southwest Atlantic council was developed after the old Latin American Fisheries Council idea finally died. The Eastern Central Atlantic council was put together after an abortive attempt to carry on one organization for the whole west coast of the continent, down through South Africa.

56 Jackson, Roy I., “Some Observations on the Future Growth of World Fisheries and the Nature of the Conservation Problem” in The Future of the Sea's Resources, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Law of the Sea Institute, June 1967, Alexander, Lewis M. (ed.), (Kingston, R.I.: University of Rhode Island, 1968), p. 12Google Scholar. At this time, Jackson was the Assistant Director-General for Fisheries of FAO.

57 FAO Document COFI/73/7, p. 3.

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59 These are words from a resolution adopted by the FAO General Conference in 1963. FAO General Conference Resolution no. 8/63, “Fisheries Development.”

60 Some important non-member governments have participated as well, notably the Soviet Union. Some say the Soviet Union would join FAO were fisheries the only concern of the organization.

61 This discussion has been entwined with debate over the future constitutional structure of COFI and its relationship to FAO. Some have argued for the reconstitution of COFI under another article of the FAO Constitution, allowing the Committee more independence and perhaps authority. Funds could then be raised independently for the Committee's activities, breaking through some present constraints. A more radical suggestion would break fisheries activities away from FAO, perhaps placing them in some new United Nations specialized agency for the oceans.

62 For a discussion of possible global involvements see Miles, Edward, Organizational Arrangements to Facilitate Global Management of Fisheries, Paper no. 4, Program of International Studies of Fishery Arrangements (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1974)Google Scholar.

63 Jackson, p. 11.