Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment
This book reviews and evaluates the scientific basis of U.S. management of fisheries for Atlantic bluefin tuna. In particular, it focuses on the issues of stock structure and stock assessments used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service for management under the International Convention for the conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
Fisheries for highly migratory species are important in all oceans and semi-enclosed seas, except for polar regions. Fisheries for straddling fish stocks are much more localised, primarily occurring in a few regions where continental shelves extend beyond the 200 miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), while most fisheries for other high seas fishery resources are deep-water fisheries. This publication examines issues relating to the stocks of these resources, including information on their state of exploitation. Findings include that about 30 percent of the stocks of highly migratory tuna and tuna-like species, more than half of highly migratory oceanic sharks and nearly two-thirds of the straddling stocks and the stocks of other high seas fishery resources are overexploited or depleted. Although the stocks concerned represent only a small fraction of the world fishery resources, they are key indicators of the state of an overwhelming part of the ocean ecosystem which appears to be more overexploited than EEZs.
Are international fisheries heading away from open access to a global commons towards a regime of property rights? The distributional implications of denying access to newcomers and re-entrants that used the resource in the past are fraught. Should the winners in this process compensate the losers and, if so, how? Regional fisheries management organisations, in whose gift participatory rights increasingly lie, are perceptibly shifting their attention to this approach, which has hitherto been little analysed; this book provides a review of the practice of these bodies and the States that are their members. The recently favoured response of governments, combating 'IUU' - illegal, unregulated and unreported - fishing, is shown to rest on a flawed concept, and the solution might lie less in law than in legal policy: compulsory dispute settlement to moderate their claims and an expansion of the possibilities of trading of quotas to make solving the global overcapacity issue easier.
Sean D. Murphy's wide-ranging and in-depth 2002 survey of U.S. practice in international law in the period 1999–2001 draws upon the statements and actions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government to examine its involvement across a range of areas. These areas include diplomatic and consular relations, jurisdiction and immunities, state responsibility and liability, international organizations, international economic law, human rights, and international criminal law. At the time of its first publication this summary of the most salient issues was a central resource on U.S. practice in international law. The volume contains extracts from hard-to-find documents, generous citations to relevant sources, tables of cases and treaties, and a detailed index. Revealing international law in the making, this essential tool for researchers and practitioners was the first in a series of books capturing the international law practice of a global player.
Some vols. include supplemental journals of "such proceedings of the sessions, as, during the time they were depending, were ordered to be kept secret, and respecting which the injunction of secrecy was afterwards taken off by the order of the House."