Comparative International Fisheries Management

High-seas fisheries are managed by a set of approximate 20 regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) that vary in terms of membership, structure, processes, and health of the stocks they manage. These RFMOs have tackled similar challenges in sometimes different and sometimes convergent ways, learning from each other and occasionally collaborating. This chapter gives an overview of the difficulties of international fisheries management; the primary regulatory approaches (and their evolution) in these organizations, such as voting rules and options to opt out of collective regulations; and the efforts to monitor and enforce rules that have been created. Individually and sometimes collectively RFMOs have worked to decrease the ability of states or vessels to fish outside of the regulatory process, including making it difficult for fish caught outside of RFMO rules to find markets, and they have increased the ability to monitor compliance. While some scholars argue that the regional nature of fisheries management causes problems and that there should be fewer organizations regulating international fisheries, RFMOs have resisted consolidation or management collaboration. Ultimately there is still much to be learned about the sources of effectiveness in management of high-seas fisheries.

Fishy business: regulatory and enforcement challenges of transnational organised IUU fishing crimes

The article aims to find the answer on the main question of how can the criminalisation of IUU fishing, especially when committed by OCGs, under suppression conventions tackle the deficits of regulations and enforcement at the international and national levels? These deficits have origin in the limited prescription by international fisheries instruments and a large autonomy and discretion of states leading to substantive divergent policies, legal framework and practices at the national level. Further, the actual international fisheries instruments do not provide for regulatory and enforcement solutions in relation to the involvement of OCGs in IUU fishing. We argue that suppression conventions at global and regional levels could serve as solutions to supplement the deficits. In explaining the argument, first we examine the phenomenon of IUU fishing and its TOC dimensions, and the significant harms caused by it. Second, we examine the regulations and enforcement provisions of international and national fisheries instruments to establish the deficits. Third, we elaborate why suppression conventions are suitable solutions. Fourth, we analyse how suppression conventions can be regulated at global and regional levels in a way that they tackle the deficits. The results of this study can be used as a reference on how a transnational crime can be criminalised under suppression conventions both in terms of its reasonings and options and thus can contribute to the study of transnational criminal law. This study is important for transnational criminal law scholars, policy makers and practitioners in the field of enforcement.

Russia and Japan: scientific and technical cooperation in the field of fisheries

Russia and Japan are the closest neighbors in the northwestern Pacific. They have common maritime borders and common marine resources. Limited contacts of scientists of the two countries in the field of fisheries began more than 100 years ago since the time of the Portsmouth Peace of 1907. Currently, Russian-Japanese scientific and technical cooperation in the field of fisheries is carried out under two intergovernmental agreements. Also, scientists from the two countries collaborate in a number of international fisheries organizations. Now the issues of preserving and studying the oceans are elevated to the rank of high state policy of Russia and Japan. This may be an additional impulse for cooperation between Russia and Japan in the field of fisheries.