AbstractThe SEAFO Convention, signed in April 2001, is one of the first new conventions to create a regional fisheries management organisation since the adoption of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement. The negotiating history of the convention, and the way the SEAFO participants dealt with key issues in the international fisheries management, illustrates effective use of the Agreement, even before the entry into force of the Agreement, and while it remains uncertain whether all SEAFO participants will also be bound by the Agreement when it is in force. The SEAFO Convention also deals with discrete high seas stocks, not covered by the Agreement.