Most countries are willing to collaborate in research, since there are no serious disadvantages to set against the undoubted advantages. This is not the case for collaboration in setting management measures, either in the narrow sense of determining catch quotas, size limits, etc., or in the broader sense of setting general fishing policy, including the development of fisheries. The disadvantages of losing some degree of authority over resources which, with the establishment of EEZs, are felt to have come fully under national control, are obvious, while it is not always immediately clear what benefits a country will gain from collaboration. Indeed there are some few special circumstances in which an individual country may stand to gain very little from collaboration. These are probably exceptional, and in general there can be very great benefits, as discussed in the following sections, depending on the pattern of movement of the fish, and the state of the fisheries in the various EEZs. The chances of serious disadvantages, whether real or apparent, increase as the form of collaboration changes from discussions of the problems of management (including a review of the strengths and weaknesses of different actions), through informal agreements on the general action that will be taken by individual countries, to formal and binding agreements (either through bilateral negotiations, or through the mechanisms of some international fishery commission or similar body) on specific action to be taken. Countries can find it easy to engage in discussions, even up to the point of reaching non-binding agreements on what needs to be done, when they may not find it acceptable to consider entering into binding agreements except when the damage that would be done to their fisheries by doing otherwise is both great and obvious (the two are not the same). Fortunately the way in which stocks are shared is such that formal and binding agreements on management measures are not always necessary. The reasons for this will be discussed in the following sections. In brief, the activities of each country are, to a large extent, confined to its own EEZ, so that, except when the mixing of fish between EEZs is very rapid, the damage to the fisheries as a whole which will arise if it fails to comply with an agreement will usually be felt mainly by its own fishermen. This may be contrasted with the fully open-access situation, either of a group of countries in the pre-EEZ period, or of national fishermen, where the individual country or fisherman will nearly always benefit from failing to comply with a regulation, regardless of the damage to the fishery as a whole.
In the rest of this section, which reviews the benefits which can come under different circumstances from collaboration in setting management measures, a distinction will therefore be made between situations where the benefits will only happen if the countries take fully coordinated action, and those where a country can gain benefit from unilateral action, even if the other countries do not. Put another way, there are situations where the only international collaboration that is essential is to have the technical (biological, economic and social) discussions to identify what can be done to benefit the fisheries; the rest can be left to individual countries. There are other situations where the collaboration has to include binding agreements to implement specific actions, and, what is too often neglected, arrangements to ensure that these agreements are followed by each country, and that all the other countries and their fishermen can see that they are being followed.
Fisheries on stocks of this type may be divided into two groups - those in which the countries concerned have similar economies and those in which the social and economic conditions differ, or the countries do not have similar objectives in managing the fisheries.
The first case is the simplest that can arise when stocks are shared. If the countries have similar economies and similar ultimate objectives (concerning, say, the relative importance given to improving economic efficiency and increasing the total supply of fish), then they will probably have similar strategic and tactical objectives as to what is the desirable state in which to maintain the fish stock, and how best to attain that state. The problems of managing the fisheries on such a stock are the technical ones of determining what actions are in fact needed to attain the desired objectives. For this, international discussions will clearly be helpful. The value of biological collaboration has already been pointed out in the previous section, and is widely acknowledged, but there is equal value in discussions by all countries (at the administrative, but more particularly, at the technical level) of the other (e.g., economic and social/technical) problems. Once suitable actions have been identified, then it will be to the individual advantage of each country to implement them individually regardless of what other countries do. No formal collaboration between countries in addition to that concerned with biological studies and data exchange is necessary, and most of the disadvantages that can arise will be avoided. However, it does happen that the fact of there having been international discussions, and that an international body has made some proposals or recommendations (even if not formally binding) can put some pressure on countries to act.
If there are differences in interests, e.g., one country has a greater need for a large supply of fish, or a larger supply of labour without alternative occupations, or the other needs a higher catch rate to be attractive to its fishermen, this will result in the preferred degrees of exploitation (as measured by, e.g., the fishing mortality) being higher in one country than another. Suppose each country then manages its fishery so as to exert what is, for that country, the optimum fishing pattern. Suppose also the mixing rate is moderately slow. Then, except for places close to the boundary between EEZs, the stock abundance will correspond to the pattern preferred by the country concerned, and each group of national fishermen will be happy. At higher mixing rates, or near the border, the stock abundance will be affected by the other fishery. That is, in the EEZs of the country applying the more restrictive policy, abundance (and hence catches) will be lower than expected; in the other EEZ, catches will be above expectations. In these circumstances it is difficult to see what coordinated actions, at least terms of applying a unified policy, would be attractive to both countries. The more restrictive country might hope to encourage the other to reduce its fishing, but can offer it little incentive to change a system which clearly suits it - why should it be asked to fish less, still less why should it encourage the first country to fish harder.
This is not to say that in practice there will not be advantages to the countries in discussing the management of these shared stocks. Often the difference in interest may be more apparent than real. It can easily happen that a full analysis of the potential benefits of reduced costs, or the reduced variability in annual catches that can come from reduced fishing rates, will show that a more restrictive policy would be in the long term interest of both countries.
This is the type of sharing for which coordination in setting management measures is most needed. Suppose two countries share a stock of this type, and biological, economic and social studies - possibly carried out in cooperation - show that a desirable level of fishing intensity would yield annual catches of 100 000 tons. If no further coordination is carried out, each country may well decide to take 60 000 tons or even more. The result would be that the target catch from the stock as a whole would be considerably exceeded, and the stock would decline. Far from getting 60 000 tons each, the countries might be likely in the long run to get no more than 40 000 tons annually. Certainly any catch they did get would be taken at a much higher cost than necessary, or than that which would have occurred if the total fishing intensity had been kept at the target level.
Up to this point the problems of managing this type of shared stock are very similar to those of managing high seas fisheries under the old system of fully open access. The history of attempting to manage those fisheries do not give much encouragement, but there are some important differences. The most important is that access is limited to those countries in which the stock occurs; there will often be only two or three, and agreement between those countries cannot be disturbed by the entry of other countries into the fishery. Secondly, the characteristics of the stock relative to the EEZ of the different countries (e.g., the location of spawning or feeding area, etc.) provides some objective measures which can help reaching agreement on the allocation of shares in the fishery.
Assuming collaboration between the interested countries has advanced far enough to determine the state of the stock, the effect of fishing on it, and the biological effects of possible management actions, and analyses are also available (from individual or cooperative studies) of the social and economic effects of the actions, then the following steps are needed to manage the stocks:
(1) Choice of strategy; i.e., the determination of the preferred pattern of fishing (e.g., the level of the overall fishing intensity on the stock).
(2) Choice of tactics, i.e., the determination of the actions needed to achieve that pattern (e.g., the amount of catch to be taken, or the number of vessels allowed to operate in the forthcoming year).
(3) Implementation of the chosen action.
(4) Evaluation of the actions, including checks that the regulations are actually being implemented, and are having expected results.
If the interests of the countries are reasonably similar - as will generally be the case for adjacent countries - this presents little difficulty. If the production of fish, regardless of cost, is a high priority, then a fishing strategy giving MSY, or a close approximation, will probably be chosen. If high catch rates and a good living for a few fishermen is a priority, then a low fishing intensity will be chosen. Difficulties will arise when countries have different objectives. For example, California and Mexico share a substantial anchovy stock. To Mexico this stock is potential raw material for a fish meal fishery, and a high rate of exploitation is desirable. To many in California the chief value of anchovy is as a food supply to valuable sport fishery, and - in limited quantities - as bait. For these, the optimum rate of exploitation is low. (There are those in California with the same interests as Mexico, but they are less numerous than the sports fishermen). Resolution of this type of conflict must be a matter of political negotiation.
The key decision here is the allocation of benefits between the participants. There are in fact two separate operations - how big a share should each participant get, and how should the shares be measured. It is often tacitly assumed that shares should be expressed as so many tons out of a given Total Allowable Catch; this may be the best, as well as the obvious, choice but the choice should not be made without some thought. It can be difficult to set the correct catch limit to achieve the derived rate of exploitation when the population fluctuates from natural causes (and if the adjustment to fluctuation is not good enough the result can be to increase the amplitude of the fluctuation to the point where a downward fluctuation brings the stock to a point of collapse. This seems to have happened to the pilchard stock off Namibia (Troadec et al., in press). It can also be difficult, if landings are dispersed along the coast, to check whether catch limits are being complied with. In purely national fisheries other measures of the impact of fishing on the stock, e.g., number of vessels, may be better. However, catch quotas have the great advantage that the units are clear - a division of a TAC of 100 000 tons into 50 000 tons for each country makes it clear that each country gets an equal share. The relative shares are much less clear if the agreement is that one country will operate 75 medium size trawlers, and the other allow 25 000 artisanal fishermen to work. The problems in the latter case will be increased still further when one country decides to up-grade the operating efficiency of the fishermen. What adjustment should be made to the number of units allowed to operate will be a fertile field of arguments.
These considerations were conclusive in most pre-EEZ international discussions, where (e.g., in ICNAF or NEAFC) allocations were (and still are, in the case of ICSEAF) expressed as a share of a TAC. For the present it is likely that agreements on managing shared stocks of this kind will continue to be expressed in terms of the weight caught, i.e., an overall TAC plus new agreement on how this TAC should be allocated to each country. However, consideration should be given to other approaches, e.g., expressing effort in terms of number of vessels.
Bases for allocation
The question here is how the allocation will be made. In the last resort this must be a matter of negotiations between the countries. The allocation of shares in particular stocks may be decided as part of negotiations on other stocks, or of wider negotiations on any other topics that the countries find convenient. Nevertheless decisions on allocations will clearly be easier to reach if there is some agreements in the general principles that should be taken into account.
In the open-access, pre-LOS era, the problem of allocation was discussed by the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF). From these discussions, which arose because it was recognized that without allocation of an overall quota, or TAC, most of the potential economics benefit from management would be dissipated, a set of general principles were developed. ICNAF's Standing Committee on Regulatory Measures recommended that “the shares of participating countries should be based mainly on historical performance (average catches over a datum period(s),with a small proportion of the total allowable catch set aside to provide for new entrants in the fishery, for non-member fishing countries, for member countries with developing fisheries, for coastal state preferences and for the fleets of member countries which were incapable of being diverted to other fisheries” (ICNAF, 1969).
These principles are now largely irrelevant. Past catches may be taken into account during some interim period of adjustment to the new regime of the sea, but it is doubtful if any country will agree that a neighbouring country should be entitled permanently to a larger proportion of catches from a shared stock merely because that country happened to develop its fishery earlier or faster. Permanent allocations will almost certainly have to be based on more basic features of the stock, and those that are more closely matched to the relation of the stock to the national EEZs. For example, if the stock spends nine months in one EEZ and three months in another, then, other things being equal, a reasonable allocation of the total TAC would seem to be 75% to the first country and 25% to the second.
In practice matters are more complicated. The effects of possible differences in the biological characteristics of the catches, e.g., one EEZ contains mostly small immature fish, are discussed in the following section; other complications that are discussed here are the contribution of biological events in one or other zone to the production of harvestable sizes of fish; the impact of the natural conditions in each zone on the costs of harvesting, and the general economic conditions in each country.
Fish are from several months up to several years old before they are harvested, and the success of the harvest depends on their having favourable conditions in these months or years, some of which may be spent a long way from the place where they are harvested. Allocations in the final harvest should therefore take account of the events from spawning onwards. This does not mean only looking at the position of the spawning and nursery grounds, and of the main feeding areas in relation to the various national EEZs, but also taking account of the impact that actions by the country concerned can have on the conditions for the stock of interest. Though the management of salmon stocks is not considered directly in this paper, these species do provide a good example of the principles that might with obvious modifications be applied to purely marine species. Successful spawning, and good survival during the early part of the salmon's life, depends on the country in whose rivers or streams the fish spawn maintaining good conditions by controlling the possible harmful effects of dam construction, logging, crop spraying, etc. One major reason why it is accepted that the coastal state concerned should have authority over salmon and other anadromous species is that without such acceptance the states concerned would have little or no interest in maintaining suitable conditions, and in due course there would be few if any salmon for anyone to catch.
Similar considerations can apply to purely marine species. A country is likely to expect a large allocation of a stock when the productivity of the stock is critically dependent on conditions in the EEZ of that country, especially when activities by the country can affect those conditions. For example, many offshore stocks have their nursery grounds in inshore areas - lagoons and estuaries, etc. - which can be seriously affected by land-reclamation, cutting of mangroves, etc. If a country controls these activities for the benefit of the fisheries it would expect a susbtantial allocation, regardless of the location of the fishing grounds, especially if these controls cause losses to other sectors of the national economy.
The factors that might be taken into consideration in setting allocations will include the position of the spawning areas, the nursery grounds, and the main feeding grounds of the adult fish, as well as the areas where the actual catches are taken. In addition it would be desirable to know how conditions in these areas affect the productivity of the stocks - its reproduction success, and the growth and mortality of the individuals. Information on most or all of these is poor or absent for many stocks, including the large majority of stocks off developing countries. This suggests that a large research effort will be needed if the allocation of shares in a common stock is to have a sound basis.
Allocation of shares also needs to take the practical and economic aspects into account. The presence of fish of a marketable size does not guarantee a successful fishery. Differences in behaviour of the fish at different stages in its annual migratory cycle will nearly always make them easier and cheaper to catch at certain times and places than at others. Many species are dispersed while feeding, but collect into compact, and easily caught, schools just before spawning. These spawning aggregations may occur in only one national EEZ, out of the number in which the stock occurs during the year. For example, the blue whiting in the northeast Atlantic is widely distributed during the feeding season from westward of the British Isles to the Faroes, Iceland and Norway, but the catch rates are high enough to be economically attractive only during the spawning season when it is restricted to British waters. The value of the individual fish on the market is also likely to vary during the year (and hence probably from one EEZ to another). Typically the fish is in best condition a little before spawning, drops rapidly during the spawning season to a minimum after spawning, and then gradually builds up during the feeding season.
Taking these factors together it is possible to consider the net worth of fish at any point in its annual migration cycle, as being the difference between its value in the market, and the costs of catching it. This is likely to be highly variable, and the total benefits from the stock are likely to be greatest when harvesting is concentrated at the times and places when the net worth is high.
There are other factors that are not biological, and not directly related to the characteristics of the stock, which will probably need to be taken into account in agreeing on allocation. Countries will differ in the value they set on being able to take a given share of the catch. Reasons for this include the existence of an efficient fleet that can take the catch at a low cost; a good marketing and distribution system, or a high demand for fish, so that a high price can be paid to fishermen; and a lack of other employment for those currently engaged in the fishery. These may not always be easy to express in comparable terms, e.g., a poor country, with few alternative supplies of protein, may set a high value on the right to fish even though, because of its poverty, the dollar value of the fish may be low. Nevertheless, with the reservations, it would seem that the overall benefits from the resource would be greatest if the countries which place a greater “value” on a share do have a larger allocation.
These economic considerations indicate the directions in which the allocations can be made, but do not give quantitative guidance on the magnitude of the allocations, e.g., they do not indicate whether a major share should be 55% or 90% of the total. Some limits on the magnitudes of the shares may be obtained from a consideration of the likely course of events if there is no agreement on allocation. Boundaries to the possible allocation will be given by the benefits that each country would obtain in the absence of agreement on allocation. The likely course of events in the case of an unallocated quota applied to a national fishery has been often described in the economic literature (e.g., Crutchfield and Zellner, 1962). The main events - a scramble by all fishermen to maximize their catches while fishing is permitted, and a resulting rapid rise in the costs of fishery until the situation is reached, at which the individual fisherman can no longer afford to try to increase his share - would undoubtedly be repeated in the multi-country situation. Costs will increase as countries seek to maintain or increase their share of the total until some equilibrium is reached, with the more efficient countries (or those prepared to provide their fishermen with the greatest subsidies) getting the largest shares - perhaps even to the point when the less efficient are driven out of the fishery altogether - but at a high cost. Estimates might be made of the shares that would be taken by each country in this equilibrium position, and these could then be used as a first approximation to the allocations. More detailed examination of the economic aspects of the management strategies that could be adopted in this situation have been made (e.g., Munro, 1979) but are outside the scope of the present paper.
Without adequate implementation and enforcement the best agreements on the strategy of management and allocation of the benefits can be useless. Enforcement of agreed regulations has always been a difficult problem in international fisheries, and it is one that in respect of the type of shared stock discussed in this section, may be made harder by the new regime of the sea. Fishermen always suspect that while their compliance with regulations may be being enforced, other groups of fishermen - from a different country, or from a different port in the same country - are less adequately controlled. This makes them less willing to comply with the regulations, and without the acceptance of the fishermen, enforcement can be very difficult. It is therefore essential in any multi-national fishery that fishermen (and administrators and others) in one country can be assured that the fishermen of other countries are complying with the regulations. Under the old regime of the sea, when most fishing was done on the high seas, there were a number of arrangements, e.g., the International Inspection Schemes of ICNAF and NEAFC, under which authorized inspectors of one country could stop fishing vessels of another country participating in the scheme. While legal action in respect of any apparent infraction remained the prerogative of the flag state, the arrangement did allow each country to know what extent fishermen of other countries were complying with the regulations.
The continuation of this scheme under the new regime would imply, if it were to be effective, that inspection vessels of one country would be able to stop and inspect vessels of a second country while in the second country's EEZ - a practice which is unlikely to be generally acceptable. Some scheme, however, is necessary to provide the necessary reassurance to each country that the others are applying the agreed measures. Agreeing on an appropriate scheme may not be easy, but is not impossible; for example, the international inspection scheme of the International Whaling Commission includes arrangements for inspectors from one country to be present at land stations of other countries. The point is that the task of such international inspectors is not to initiate legal proceedings (which would be unacceptable) but only to establish facts.
The actual arrangements reached in any particular case would be the result of negotiations between the countries immediately concerned, and would take account of many factors outside fisheries, particularly the general degree of collaboration between the countries. They will not be discussed further here; what is worth noting here is that the various regulations do not involve equal difficulties in checking that they are being followed. In particular it is worth re-examining the question whether the magnitude of the catch is necessarily a better measure of the amount of fishing than measures such as the number or size of the fishing vessels. Experience of catch quotas in national and international fisheries has shown that the difficulties of enforcement increase rapidly as the number of landing places (and also the unit value of the fish) increase, often to the point that adequate enforcement is impracticable. Even in the North Sea, surrounded by countries with good administrative structures, enforcement of quotas is far from perfect. For example, it is believed that the catches of soles from the North Sea in some recent years was 50% or more above the reported total (ICES, 1980, Table 63). The danger of this situation is that not only are the regulations ineffective but once the statistics become unreliable it is very difficult to know what is happening to the fisheries and the fish stocks, and hence to plan more effective regulations.
The statistics of the fisheries of most developing countries is at the moment far from satisfactory; improvement may not come readily if it were felt that one result of such improvement would be that its fishermen might be more rigorously controlled than those of neighbouring countries fishing the same stock. Even if there are improvements, it would still be difficult for one country to satisfy itself that the catches of other countries were in fact being kept to the agreed level. Consideration should therefore be given to other measures of the amount of fishing - e.g., numbers of ships - that can be more easily verified.
These present some of the most difficult problems in the management of shared stocks. Both practical experience and theoretical studies have showed that the benefits from harvesting a resource are increased if the capture of certain sizes or condition of fish (particularly small fish) is avoided, and fishing is concentrated around some optimum size of capture. Almost by definition catches in national EEZs will differ in the sizes and condition of fish, and it can easily happen that there would be considerable advantages, in terms of the total weight caught, if fishing were concentrated in one or other area.
In this situation, it is difficult to see, unless other factors are brought to bear, what actions can be taken. It is not in the interests of the state in whose waters the small (or otherwise “undesirable” fish) are taken to reduce its catches for the benefits of the other state (or states) even if such action might add to the catch of all states taken together. Certainly the draft text for the new Law of the Sea, while calling, e.g., in Article 63, for consultation and collaboration between states, does not call for self-sacrificing action of this type for the sake of conservation or better management. However, since the benefits to one country exceed the sacrifices made by the other (otherwise the total would not be increased) there are clearly opportunities for the beneficiary country to offer trade-offs in some other negotiations (not necessarily connected with fisheries). A country may well be able to discourage any further expansion of a national fishery on small fish in return for concessions in other matters, though it may be much more difficult, especially politically, to take action to reduce any national fishery. The real answer to better management of this type of fishery may however lie in the country in which the large fish occur allowing access by the other country to its EEZ.
Considerable discussions have taken place over access to national EEZs by foreign vessels. These have almost wholly concerned access to the part of the potential harvest - the ‘surplus’ - not taken by the coastal state, by states which have no special interest in the stock. The possible harvesting of a shared stock by fishermen of one state in the EEZ of an adjacent state has been much more rarely discussed.
In the case of stocks making seasonal migrations for which agreement has been reached between two countries on the allocation of the total catch, it makes little difference to country A whether country B takes its share of the total catch in its own EEZ, or that of A. It can, however, make a big difference to country B, and the economic success of its fishery if its allocation can be taken in either EEZ. In many cases this may allow a fishery that is normally highly seasonal to extend its operation to most of the year. A fairly extreme example is the Gambia, whose EEZ is a narrow strip, across which large stocks of sardinella (and other species) migrate. The fish occur in Gambian waters in sufficient numbers and concentrations to support an industrial fishery only for short and irregular periods, but at other times occur in Senegalese and other waters. During these periods total catches can be high (equivalent to a good-sized industrial fishery for Gambia), but a Gambian industrial fishery is only viable if it has access to the shared stock when it is in Senegalese or other waters.
The benefits are even greater in the case of the other type, a ‘development’ migration. If, for example, the country in which the nursery grounds occur is allowed to fish on the adult fish when they are in the EEZ of another country, this ability also gives it the incentive to reduce fishing on the small fish.
The distinction between access by a non-coastal state to a “surplus”, and the transfer by a coastal state of the location of its activities on a shared stock from one EEZ to another should now be clear. In the first case the state whose fishermen are granted access has no authority or jurisdiction over the stock; in the second, it does have such jurisdiction to the extent that the stock does occur in its own EEZ. In the latter case decisions on the pattern of fishing by each of the countries sharing the stocks can be made in two stages. First is the decision on the magnitude of the shares to be taken by each country (e.g., the allocation of shares in some Total Allowable Catch); this will be done largely on the basis of the distribution of the stock relative to the national EEZs. Second, there can be agreements on the extent to which one country can take its allocation in the EEZ of another. For example, the USSR has a large share of the TAC of Arctic-Norwegian cod because much of the feeding grounds for young cod, and the most productive fishing grounds for small fish, occur in the Soviet EEZ. However, it would probably be to the advantage of Norway, in whose EEZ the spawning area, and most of the best fishing grounds for large cod occur, if much of the Soviet allocation were taken in the Norwegian EEZ, i.e., as large cod rather than small.
Apart from increasing economic efficiency, and possibly also making the pattern of fishing better adapted to the rational utilization of the stock, access to the EEZs of adjacent countries could have one other beneficial effect. Especially if there is mutual access, this pattern of fishing could lead to a better mutual trust that the agreements on management actions (limits on catches or numbers of boats) are in fact being followed.
Management of shared migratory stocks will require formal and binding agreements between countries on the measures to be implemented. Unlike the case of non-migratory, transboundary, stocks where, if each country adopts measures suited to its own national interest all will be well (or reasonably so), similar selfish procedures in the case of these stocks will lead to competition to maximize national shares, and the same disasters of over-fishing that have always occurred with open access.
Two types of arrangements are possible. In one a permanent Commission is established whose recommendations are binding on member countries (subject usually to some “objection” procedure). In the other agreements are made directly between governments, possibly on an ad hoc basis for each year. In practice a hybrid procedure has sometimes been followed. For example, the management of yellowfin tuna in the eastern Pacific is based on the analyses of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (I-ATTC). After these have been discussed in the Commission, and suggested levels of total catch reviewed, further inter-governmental discussions outside the framework of the Commission are held to examine the actual detailed regulations (e.g., exemptions for small vessels, or countries with small fleets). Only after agreement on detailed measures have been reached at these outside meetings is the Commission meeting resumed to agree formally on the overall quota. A somewhat similar procedure was followed for some time in respect of Antarctic whales. The critical discussions on how to allocate the quota between countries were held outside the framework of the International Whaling Commission.
It may be that somewhat similar procedures will often be found useful in respect of shared stocks. Many of these stocks are shared between only a limited number of countries. The most frequent situation is probably for only two adjacent countries to share a stock whose distribution lies across the boundary between their EEZs. In the post-UNCLOS era it is unlikely that these countries will want others to be involved in discussions on management of their stocks. The membership of regional fishery bodies, and even of the sub-committees, or other sub-regional groupings of these bodies, matches in only very few cases the group of countries that share any one particular stock, usually being larger. At the same time the meetings of these bodies provide both a forum in which the problems of managing the stocks in the region can be discussed in general terms, and an occasion at which group of countries can meet together to agree on specific measures. That is, regional bodies may become both less formally involved in management (because the formal decision will be taken by ad hoc meetings between the countries directly concerned), and more influential in practice (because their meetings will be the occasions for reaching more effective management decisions than could ever be reached in the pre-EEZ open-acess situation).
The changes in the legal regime of the sea do not, on the face of it, alter greatly the conditions under which the fisheries beyond 200 miles are carried out. Appropriate sections in the draft text call upon the countries concerned to collaborate with a view to achieving rational management, but the formal effect is not much more than the expression of a hope.
The real impact of the legal changes is, however, for most stocks quite substantial. Most of the stocks concerned - nearly all of which are tuna - are also harvested within 200 miles. These operations will come under the control of the coastal state or states, and where these catches are a high proportion of the total, the coastal states may be in a position to bring about a management regime that is not very different from one or other of the situations described earlier in this section. A fairly extreme example is provided by the island states in the southwest Pacific. The regional geography is such that the EEZs of the various states form a close-knit mosaic with the area of high seas outside any EEZ being extremely small. It is certainly too small for any catching of skipjack or other tunas (the main resource of the region) to be practicable without access to some at least of the national EEZs. The coastal states, particularly if they coordinate their negotiations with non-local fishing fleets, can put themselves in a position to ensure that among the conditions of access is an agreement to abide with regional management arrangements also when fishing on the high seas. The South Pacific presents another unusual feature in that many of the newly emerging island states are not in a position to engage directly in large-scale tuna fishing, and for the foreseeable future much of the fishing will continue to be carried out by vessels based outside the region. The complexities of the arrangements that are emerging in this region can only be touched on here. The main point is that the new regime of the sea, plus the accidents of local geography, has transferred the tuna stocks in that region into a resource that can potentially be controlled by the coastal states, and the problems are largely similar to those of other migrating stocks shared by several countries (though pending the full analysis of the tagging experiments carried out by the South Pacific Commission, the exact nature of the sharing is not very well established).
A more typical situation for tuna is provided by the yellowfin tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific. This can be fished in quantity both inside and outside 200 miles off central America from Mexico to Ecuador. The inability to fish inside 200 miles would lower the efficiency and profitableness of a non-local fishery, but not make it completely impracticable. In this situation most of the problems that inhibited effective management in the pre-EEZ era - the need for management measures to be reached by consensus, and the ability of states outside the agreement to enter the fishery and reap most of the benefits from the agreement - still remain. While considerable thought has gone into the examination of how tuna can be managed (e.g., Joseph and Greenough, 1979; King, 1979), it is far from clear how effective management can be achieved. The nature of the population dynamics of tuna (so far as they are currently known) make the failure to manage tuna both more likely, and less dangerous. Unlike some other groups of fish (noticeably herrings and their allies) tuna (except possibly bluefin tuna) seem to be resilient under heavy exploitation, with the gross production being maintained. In the absence of effective management the industry may have economic difficulties, but the tuna fisheries have not collapsed. On the other hand, like the prospect of being hanged, the collapse of a fishery does concentrate the mind wonderfully. The history of whaling and of other fisheries show clearly that it often takes the collapse of the fishery to bring into force effective management measures. Lacking such measures for action it may be some time before a strict management regime for tuna is set up. In any case it is not possible here to go further into the problem of tuna management.
