An important study
was recently published by economists Crow White and Christopher Costello, who
examined the provocative idea of completely closing international waters to
fishing. They found that closing the
High Seas to fishing would, on a global scale, simultaneously give rise to
large gains in fisheries profit (>100%), fisheries yields (>30%), and
fish stock conservation (>150%).
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| Amberjack. Photo by Dee Wescott |
View the study here
Abstract
The world's oceans
are governed as a system of over 150 sovereign exclusive economic zones (EEZs,
~42% of the ocean) and one large high seas (HS) commons (~58% of ocean) with
essentially open access. Many high-valued fish species such as tuna, billfish, and
shark migrate around these large oceanic regions, which as a consequence of
competition across EEZs and a global race-to-fish on the HS, have been
over-exploited and now return far less than their economic potential. We
address this global challenge by analyzing with a spatial bioeconomic model the
effects of completely closing the HS to fishing. This policy both induces
cooperation among countries in the exploitation of migratory stocks and
provides a refuge sufficiently large to recover and maintain these stocks at
levels close to those that would maximize fisheries returns. We find that
completely closing the HS to fishing would simultaneously give rise to large
gains in fisheries profit (>100%), fisheries yields (>30%), and fish
stock conservation (>150%). We also find that changing EEZ size may benefit
some fisheries; nonetheless, a complete closure of the HS still returns larger
fishery and conservation outcomes than does a HS open to fishing.
