Exploring Fishing Season Disputes in Contested Waters
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My name is Oskar Eyers and I am a Durham graduate currently studying a LPC at Northumbria, having completed my GDL there. I am twenty-three and currently live in Northumberland, having grown up in London. Having read Theology at Durham, I was keen to focus on something more practical whilst remaining in the North-East.
Only able to study domestic law during my GDL, I was keen to learn more about international law and regulatory frameworks and so used the “Further Area of Law” module to do so. This essay was submitted as the thesis for that module.
The lack of respect shown by the PRC for the decisions of international courts has lead to an increased reliance on bilateral treaties to jointly access resources in disputed waters as an alternative to seemingly-ineffective arbitration. As these terms largely reflect the ability of states to physically control access to the sea, it’d be possible to argue that the future of maritime law is a full-circle return to van Bynkershoek’s cannon-shot rule.
- Oskar Eyers, Author
Introduction
The twentieth century saw two key trends in global fishing and fishery management; enormous overfishing[1] as a result of technological advance[2] and, as a corollary, an increased need at both national and international levels to regulate fishing.[3] By the end of the century international legal frameworks were developed to govern fishing, a rejection of Grotius’ principle that fish were an endless and therefore free resource;[4] fish stocks could now be owned and therefore controlled. Most fisheries operate under a ‘season’ system which dictates when fish can be caught; this measure, intended to protect fisheries from over-exploitation, is a classic example of states and international bodies curtailing the activities of other parties by asserting ownership and management rights.
Nonetheless, because large populations of fish ignore attempts to divide the oceans by means of lines on a map[5] and because these divisions are often contested, some stocks are, de facto, shared between two or more nations who may have entirely different fishing seasons or conservation measures in place. A key question for marine conservation is, therefore, how fishing seasons function in waters over which two or more nations have claimed ownership and the corollary right to impose them. This thesis proposes a solution to this problem through reference to international legislative frameworks and analysis of recent judgments at the PCA.
[1] Clara McNeill, ‘Go Fish! A Critical Assessment of G. Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ Application to the Fishing Industry’ (2021) 6 Durham Law Review 1
[2] Jill Wakefield, ‘The Ecosystem Approach and the Common Fisheries Policy’, in David Langlet and Rosemary Rayfuse (eds), ‘The Ecosystem Approach in Ocean Planning and Governance: Perspectives from Europe and Beyond’ (Brill 2018) 290
[3] Ibid 288
[4] Edward Gordon, ‘Grotius and the Freedom of the Seas in the Seventeenth Century’ (2008) 16 Willamette Journal of International Law and Dispute Resolution 252, 252
[5] Rögnvaldur Hannesson, ‘Sharing a Migrating Fish Stock’ (2013) 28 Marine Resource Economics 1, 2
