title: Close the high seas to fishing?
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Crow
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Costello
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000379:methods*; D005398:Fisheries; D005399:Fishes; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009792:Oceans and Seas