Overfishing and destructive fishing methods may be forcing an end to the 400-year-old freedom of the high seas.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1983 put on paper the 17th-century concept of the freedom of the seas. That principle, the high seas today usually comprising waters outside 200 nautical miles from shore, generally implies that mariners are legally free to roam those waters freely.
Less is usually realised about the small print, however – those freedoms do have limitations. The convention assumes that nations ensure that no undue damage is caused.
For instance, environmental considerations in early December made the UN General Assembly vote to impose strict regulations on high seas bottom-trawling vessels, and a UN working group will meet in February 2010 to discuss establishing Marine Protected Areas on the high seas where fishing activities would be restricted.
At a conference in London recently, environmentalists pointed out that fishing vessels are not required to carry the same kind of electronic identification systems that merchant ships have to install, enabling monitoring for control of their activities.
“On motorways we have cameras that can take pictures of who’s going too fast, but there’s nothing like that on the high seas”, said Kristina Gjerde, the high seas policy adviser for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
“Enough governments are fed up enough with illegal fishing activities that there is a movement towards a global register of fishing vessels. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is looking to acquire one”, he added.
Jeff Ardron, director of the high seas programme for the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, underlined that the freedom of the high seas concept has always been accompanied by responsibilities.
“They were not unfettered freedoms – they have just been treated that way. The time has come when we are finally going to implement the Law of the Sea Convention as it was intended,” he told the Natural England conference, entitled “Sea Change: securing a future for Europe’s seas”.