Defying Ocean's End - High Seas Governance

The oceans beyond national jurisdiction are under threat from many sources. Threats primarily stem from irresponsible fishing activities, shipping, pollution, marine debris and climate change. Overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities and destructive fishing practices are depleting species, destroying habitats, killing non-target species, endangering vulnerable species, shifting food webs and degrading ecosystems. Shipping with its pervasive noise and discharges of plastics, oily wastes and ballast water contaminated with non-native species can also harm species and disrupt ecosystems. Pollution from land-based sources is contaminating even the deepest ocean trenches with heavy metal and pesticide residues, while airborne emissions are changing climate regimes and ocean chemistry. Scientists have predicted that climate change may have many impacts, ranging from alterations in ocean circulation regimes to disruptions in the chemical balance essential to deep sea coral and mollusk growth. Combined, these effects are undermining the health of marine species and ecosystems and their resilience to changing climate conditions.

In the 64% of the oceans that lie beyond national jurisdiction (the high seas and deep seabed), threats from human activities are especially challenging as they are beyond the ability of any one nation to control effectively. This means that States must both agree on the rules and agree to be bound by them. Yet in the case of expanding high seas bottom trawl fisheries, for example, there are major gaps in regulatory regimes, ecosystem considerations are seldom taken into account, and scientific information is often ignored. There is growing concern that ocean noise, bioprospecting and even marine scientific research pose threats to marine species and biodiversity in the high seas and deep seabed, while the possibility of open ocean aquaculture and CO2 sequestration in these areas could raise additional environmental issues. The need for effective control of existing, expanding and emerging human activities in these areas requires concerted international attention.

The complexity and diversity of life on the bottom of the deep ocean was virtually unknown thirty years ago when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was negotiated. We now know it is the largest habitat for life on earth, containing some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Many more exciting discoveries await us. But the same advances in technology that enable us to peer into these murky depths also endanger their inhabitants.

Today, new seabed mapping technologies make is easier to pinpoint rich fishing grounds, while improvements in trawling gear now put cold water corals and seamounts down to 2000 meters at risk. Bycatch of deepwater sharks, corals, sponges, giant spider crabs, and other creatures often comprises 50% or more of the total catch. The first year of the seamount fishery in New Zealand's South Tasman Rise (1997) is estimated to have caught 10,000 tons of coral, and only 4,000 tons of orange roughy (Gianni, 2004).

Fish stocks have already plummeted. Seventy five percent of world fish stocks are already fully or over-exploited, according to the FAO; large predatory fish have already been reduced 90% in just 50 years (Myers & Worm 2003 Nature 423:280). Hundreds of thousands of seabirds, sea turtles and dolphins and millions of sharks are killed each year in the process.

Political boundaries create a major obstacle to ecosystem-based management. As was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly thirty five years ago, "the problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole". We cannot protect critical ecological processes and functions by only protecting those within two hundred nautical miles from shore. We cannot protect and conserve migratory species such as sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, sharks, and tuna without encompassing the full range of the species, including both national and international waters. We cannot protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction unless countries act together. Gaps in high seas governance, the failure to integrate conservation and protection measures in areas beyond national jurisdiction, and inadequate attention to coherence between national and international measures in adjacent areas all place the vibrant life and diversity of our oceans beyond national jurisdiction at risk.

The Law of the Sea Convention provides that the "Area" (seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof beyond the limits of national jurisdiction) and its resources are the common heritage of [hu]mankind. However, the living resources of the seabed were not included in the Law of the Sea Convention's detailed provisions on the regime for the Area. These relate almost entirely to mineral resources (e.g. manganese nodules, polymetallic sulphides, cobalt crusts) and procedures for ensuring that they are managed efficiently, in an environmentally-sound manner, and for the benefit of humankind as a whole. They include requirements to protect the marine environment from harmful minerals-related activities, but they do not address protecting the living creatures of seamounts, for example, from the impacts of high seas bottom fishing or other, non-minerals-related activities.

Instead, protecting and conserving living marine resources and biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction is dealt with through an array of binding legal obligations and non-binding principles, based on the framework established by the Law of the Sea Convention. Relevant agreements include: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Fish Stocks Agreement relating to highly migratory and straddling fish stocks, the Convention on Migratory Species, numerous agreements under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on international shipping, and many others, including a number of regional agreements. These form a web of obligations to conserve high seas living resources, to protect biodiversity, to preserve the marine environment, to prevent pollution and to cooperate in so doing. But they fall short of what is needed and vast improvements are required in they way they are implemented.

The UN Fish Stocks Agreement, for example, sets internationally agreed standards that could be usefully applied to all high seas fisheries. It explicitly incorporates modern principles such as the precautionary approach, ecosystem-based management, transparency and public participation for high seas fisheries management. But currently it applies only to highly migratory fish stocks such as tunas, swordfish and oceanic sharks and to straddling fish stocks such as the cod. Discrete high seas stocks like those associated with seamounts are not covered.?

In actual practice, the ecosystem-based and precautionary provisions of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement are rarely applied anywhere. High seas fisheries management is currently undertaken through a patchwork of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, supplemented by eleven purely advisory regional bodies. Of the twelve RFMOs, seven are restricted by mandate to a single species or groups of species. Only five RFMOs have regulatory competence over all species within their region, and thus over high seas bottom fishing as well. Surveys have shown that only one, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, is coming anywhere close to matching the standards of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement for either pelagic or deepwater species. The newer RFMO agreements in the South East Atlantic and the Western and Central Pacific that are based on the UN Fish Stocks Agreement should improve on this poor record, as should the recently-revised agreement on inter-American tropical tuna, but most RFMOs have yet to expand beyond single-species management.

Significant areas of the ocean remain without any regulations to govern high seas bottom fishing. This situation allows destructive deepwater fishing practices that damage fragile seamount and other deep sea communities to persist. It also threatens deep sea fish stocks with rapid depletion, as the characteristics of most deep water species (slow growth, late maturity, low productivity) render them especially vulnerable to over-exploitation. Without a highly precautionary management system in place before a fishery begins, the fishery may become commercially extinct in just a few years time. This is exactly what happened in the Southwest Indian Ocean, where a bottom fishery began, peaked and collapsed within three years, well before a management arrangement could be agreed (Gianni, 2004).?

Despite this depressing news, very exciting progress has been made in the past four years. Many governments have acknowledged the need for action to repair the leaky high seas governance boat. At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development commitments were made to encourage the application by 2010 of an ecosystem-based approach to management; develop representative networks of marine protected areas, based on scientific information and consistent with international law, by 2012; and establish a regular process under the United Nations for global reporting and assessment of the state of the marine environment. Commitments to maintain the productivity and biodiversity of important and vulnerable marine and coastal areas specifically included areas beyond national jurisdiction. Two years later, in November 2004, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) called for urgent action to specifically address high seas bottom trawling in sensitive areas. At the same time it kick started two significant processes: 1) it established a UNGA Informal Open-ended Working Group to consider issues related to conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, which met in February 2006; and 2) as a result of deliberations in UN and other bodies, the new inter-agency UN-Oceans mechanism established a Task Force on Biodiversity in Marine Areas beyond National Jurisdiction in January 2005, comprised of UN agencies and others relevant institutions to better coordinate the activities of secretariats concerned with these activities. In November 2005, UNGA finally launched the two-year start-up phase of the global marine assessment (GMA). This is a preparatory stage for a regular process to improve knowledge of oceanic biodiversity and ecosystems. In 2006, nations will also gather to review the implementation of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement. The UNGA is also committed to assess progress by States and RFMOs in protecting vulnerable marine ecosystems from destructive bottom fishing activities and to deliberate where arrangements are inadequate and make further recommendations. Recommendations could include adopting interim prohibitions on destructive fishing practices, including bottom trawling, that adversely impact these areas located beyond national jurisdiction while scientists find out where they are and decision makers develop effective and legally binding measures to protect them.

The European Union has already proposed the development of an implementing agreement to UNCLOS to promote integrated measures for biodiversity conservation in areas beyond national jurisdiction, with particular reference to identification and protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems through a network of MPAs. Such an agreement could reflect the precedent of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, designed to implement UNCLOS fishery provisions with respect to highly migratory and straddling fish stocks.]As suggested by the European Union, an implementing agreement could ensure that modern principles including precaution, ecosystem-based management and transparency are applied by all institutions and to all uses. Such an agreement could address:

Further information available:

The Mediterranean deep-sea ecosystems: An overview of their structure, functioning and anthropogenic impacts. An IUCN/WWF product.

Full version (64 pages)

Executive summary (English)

Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2004 - Executive summary (1.2Mb)
Edited by Clive Wilkinson (includes chapter on Cold Water Corals)

High Seas Bottom Trawl Fisheries and their Impact on the Biodiversity of Vulnerable Deep-Sea Ecosystems: Options for International Action. (Full length version) Matthew Gianni, November 2004. An IUCN / NRDC / CI / WWF product (2.7 Mb)