How the International Community Regulates Fisheries Across the Ocean

Overview

Regional fisheries management organizations, known as RFMOs, are key international entities responsible for the conservation and management of many of the world’s most valuable commercial fish stocks, including tunas worth more than $40 billion a year, as well as other highly migratory species, such as swordfish, sharks and rays. RFMOs are made up of multiple countries who determine how much fish can be caught and by what fishing methods in various, sometimes overlapping, regions of the global ocean. They are powerful international decision-making bodies, and their work has significant implications for the health of the ocean well beyond their target areas and fisheries.

This list of frequently asked questions explains the structure, operations and impact of RFMOs.

What is an RFMO?

RFMOs are established by treaties or similar international agreements, often under the auspices of the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement – an overarching treaty outlining the “conservation and sustainable use” of shared fish stocks. Each RFMO comprises member governments that share a practical or financial interest in managing and conserving fish stocks in a region of the ocean. These include coastal States that border the area being managed; nations whose fleets travel, often long distances, to areas where fishing occurs; and those that import the managed fisheries’ products.

Who can join an RFMO?

Any State may apply to join an RFMO, with acceptance contingent on various provisions, including sharing fishery data, abiding by the RFMO’s rules and contributing funds for scientific assessments. Nations with large fishing fleets that span the globe – such as China, Japan, the United States and members of the European Union – belong to many RFMOs.

How do RFMOs make and enforce their decisions?

Although each RFMO is structured differently, in general, their decision-making processes all begin with some form of scientific committee that gathers and analyzes data to develop technical recommendations on management provisions, such as sustainable catch levels, habitat and biodiversity protections, and gear restrictions. Most RFMOs also have committees for other topics, such as promoting compliance with management decisions and addressing impacts on the marine environment. Member governments then consider this scientific and other advice to develop management plans – which usually must be unanimously agreed, though occasionally a majority vote is sufficient – as well as related practices.

Despite the reliance on consensus, members can submit a formal, legal objection and receive an exemption from any requirement. If objections are used and approved frequently, however, they risk undermining the implementation or effectiveness of a conservation measure.

How do RFMOs determine catch limits?

Many RFMOs have committed to setting science-based catch limits using stock assessments and advice from their scientific committees. But those assessments are inherently uncertain, so scientists’ advice leaves room for interpretation by RFMO managers. That ambiguity, especially where member States have not already agreed on long-term objectives for each stock, often leads to catch limit negotiations that are time-consuming, political and driven by short-term economic interests and ultimately to catch levels that are much higher than what is sustainable. Fortunately, this is starting to change.

Are RFMOs successful in preventing overfishing and maintaining healthy stocks?

Historically, RFMOs have struggled to curtail overfishing and maintain healthy fish populations, and although they have made strides to better manage fisheries resources in recent years, short-term politics continue to get in the way of long-term sustainability. But some RFMOs are beginning to change this dynamic, particularly by adopting precautionary “harvest strategies” as a long-term solution to management problems, and stronger enforcement and compliance mechanisms to better combat illegal fishing and ensure that fishers adhere to management measures.

What is a harvest strategy?

Harvest strategies, also called “management procedures,” are a relatively recent innovation in fisheries management. They involve RFMO member States agreeing to long-term objectives for each fishery and to actions managers will automatically take to ensure that management regimes meet those goals. Compared with other management methods, harvest strategies are more predictable, transparent and effective over the long term and better able to account for the uncertainty inherent in even the best available science, benefitting managers, fishers, supply chains, markets and the public.

Can more than one RFMO manage a single fishery?

Yes, but rarely. This may occur when a fish stock migrates between ocean areas managed by different RFMOs or when the geographic areas covered by two RFMOs overlap. These situations can result in ambiguities that undermine the effectiveness of management measures, and RFMOs are making efforts to improve their coordination in these instances. For example, Pacific bluefin tuna fisheries are managed by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission in the eastern Pacific and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission in the western Pacific. These two organizations recently formed a joint working group to design a rebuilding plan for that heavily depleted species, which both RFMOs adopted. Elsewhere, overlapping and adjacent RFMOs are also signing memorandums of understanding more often than in the past to, among other things, improve their data-sharing.

How do RFMOs promote compliance?

RFMO decisions are binding for all members, but good policies are only effective if members follow them. In practice, RFMOs do not always have strong systems in place to identify the vessels, ports, authorities and governments that do not meet their obligations and to address non-compliance. Most RFMOs have compliance committees charged with reviewing each member’s implementation of the RFMO’s management requirements and any instances of non-compliance, which can have consequences, such as reduced access to fishing opportunities or trade restrictions. However, repercussions like these with financial implications are rare.

Instead, most RFMOs tend to favor other responses such as capacity-building because, often, members cannot provide enough information to fully illuminate the circumstances behind the non-compliance. And recognition is growing among RFMOs of the importance of third-party systems to assist in observing and recording activities on fishing vessels and of technology to track vessels, fishing activity and even catch to provide more complete compliance data. But additional reforms are needed to improve transparency in the compliance review process, to increase reporting by countries on the activities of their fleets and to regularly impose consequences for non-compliance.

How do RFMOs combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing?

RFMOs have many tools available to combat IUU fishing of the species they manage and improve overall governance of the ocean, such as the ability to mandate monitoring, control and surveillance of fishing and fishing vessels in the areas of the ocean under their purview. And by adopting these and other targeted measures, RFMOs also provide a mechanism for implementing the requirements of other international agreements designed to end or prevent IUU fishing, including the Port State Measures Agreement. Strong RFMO management helps countries provide oversight and governance for their fishing fleets to ensure that they meet international requirements. Further, RFMOs often maintain lists of persistently offending IUU vessels that are barred from operating in their fisheries. Together, these efforts create a culture of effective oversight across the RFMOs’ ocean areas with the best-performing RFMOs setting a benchmark for others to meet.

However, although RFMO boundaries cover more than 90% of the ocean, the mandates are only for the management of specific fisheries, meaning some fisheries can fall through the cracks. For example, squid fishing is a growing industry, but it is largely unregulated, particularly in the northern Indian Ocean, the tropical Pacific and the southwestern Atlantic. But member governments can close these gaps by expanding RFMOs’ roles to include management of some of these species and ensure that all major fisheries have rules in place that can deliver long-term sustainability.

Do RFMOs account for the effects of fishing on marine ecosystems and biodiversity?

Most RFMOs have a mandate to consider the impacts of fishing on “bycatch” species – those caught unintentionally during the fishing process, such as sharks and turtles – and on the wider ecosystem. But their efforts to meet this requirement have been limited, focusing mainly on bycatch and the impact of certain types of fishing gear on the environment.

RFMOs need to do more to consider the effects of large-scale fishing and climate change on their entire management areas, especially on non-target wildlife, such as seabirds, marine mammals, and small fishes and invertebrates that are critical to the food web. Efforts could include reducing fishing to account for the needs of predator species or restricting where fishing takes place to protect especially vulnerable ecosystems and wildlife.

Building biodiversity conservation measures into RFMOs’ management regimes is also critical to achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which was agreed in 2022 under the Convention on Biological Diversity. RFMOs have a key role in identifying areas of the high seas that could be safeguarded as part of international efforts to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, the goal defined in target 3 of the GBF. Other targets, notably targets 5 and 10, require RFMOs to embed an ecosystem approach in their management to help halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

How are RFMOs adapting to climate change?

Although RFMOs have understood climate change for some time, members have only recently started to carefully consider how it is likely to affect fisheries management. Several RFMOs have taken steps to respond to the effects of warming waters, including developing expert groups and workplans and requiring that climate change be factored into future decision-making. Well-designed harvest strategies can also help RFMOs improve their climate change readiness by providing some assurance that management will adapt to future ocean conditions, including warmer waters.

What role do RFMOs play in the creation of marine protected areas?

With the 2023 adoption of a United Nations treaty, the global community took a major step towards the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity on the high seas – that is, areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdictions – by creating a framework for the establishment of high seas marine protected areas (MPAs). Research has shown that highly protected MPAs, such as those that are closed to fishing, are among the most effective tools to conserve biodiversity. Therefore, when the treaty enters into force, some proposed MPAs may include fishing closures in RFMO-managed areas. RFMO experts will be able to comment on suggested MPAs and management plans and detail how MPAs or other area-based management tools can work together with fisheries management regimes to ensure a sustainable future for high seas resources.

However, building towards MPAs on the high seas does not have to wait for the treaty to enter into force. RFMOs have the authority to manage fisheries based on area and could advance measures that close some places to fishing at any time. These measures would apply only to the fisheries under that RFMO’s jurisdiction, so equivalent efforts may be required at multiple organizations governing the same area, particularly when other activities (e.g. shipping, oil and gas exploration) also occur in those places.

Are RFMO deliberations open to the public?

The transparency of discussions, decision-making and other processes, along with who can participate in and observe meetings, varies by RFMO. Some allow accredited observers in only certain meetings. In general, RFMO deliberations are much less transparent than other international or domestic conservation or management organizations, some of which even livestream their meetings. In most cases, members of the media also are not allowed in RFMO meetings, except for ceremonial opening and closing remarks. This lack of transparency is particularly notable because RFMOs and other more transparent international bodies – such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, commonly known as CITES – have significant overlap in membership. And some governments provide greater transparency for their domestic fisheries management than occurs within the RFMOs of which they are members.

How does The Pew Charitable Trusts help improve RFMO policies around the globe?

Because RFMOs are responsible for the management of billions of dollars of seafood for the global marketplace and are critical to sustainable fisheries, Pew works across RFMOs to improve the management of fisheries and the impact of fishing on vulnerable species by:

• Promoting the use of harvest strategies.
• Helping governments better track and prevent illegal fishing.
• Advancing the incorporation of ecosystem and habitat protections in management decisions.
• Educating consumers, retailers and other market players about the RFMO process and management of commercially important fish stocks.
• Encouraging the adoption of stronger rules to govern fisheries and meaningful consequences for non-compliance.