17th century doctrine sparked rivalry among powerful nations over fish catches

IN 1609, the Freedom of the Seas Doctrine was implemented, resulting in the tragedy of commons.

Its principle was simple: No sea can belong to or be the property of a nation since it is impossible for a country to take possession of the waters or to occupy it.

This doctrine was flawed in principle, as it created a free for all regime, intensifying competition between powerful nations to catch the last fish. In the end, the fishing industry fell in the control of a few European and Asian nations. The Freedom of the Seas Doctrine lasted until the late 1980s.

“The free for all regime meant that no inch of the sea was spared as nations scrambled for fish,” said Wisdom Akpalu, a professor of economics at the University of Ghana. “By the late 1970s and early 1980s, all oceans were being fished with absolutely no control whatsoever.”

By the 1990s, the world realised that it was time to put laws in place before fish became extinct. Consequently, a United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was convened. The convention agreed that each coastal nation would have exclusive rights to 200 nautical miles of the oceans waters, (370 kilometres) now referred to as Exclusive Economic Zones.

These maritime zones meant that each of the coastal countries was tasked with the responsibility of ensuring effective conservation and management of the ocean waters, as well restoring fish populations.

Each country also had the responsibility of collecting data on its fish stocks and sharing it with other countries, especially with respect to transboundary and migratory fish stocks.

On this aspect, Africa has failed.

While this EEZ principle looked good on paper, there was a mismatch between the law and the biology of the fish. The law failed to consider that some fish are highly migratory and straddle two countries.

“While we were making the laws, we forgot to tell the fish they now belong to country A or country B and that they should, therefore, stay put and not cross into another country’s waters,” said Prof Akpalu. “That’s just ridiculous; fish have no visa, no passport, no nationalilty. They don’t know boundaries. How then will Kenya, for example, lay claim to fish that neither knows it is Kenyan nor lives exclusively in Kenyan waters?”

With the 200 nautical miles, each country had to design its laws — other than the international laws — to govern how fishing will be carried out within its waters.

The laws presented a challenge with policing illegal fishing activities, such that when an illegal vessel is found in Kenyan waters and it flees into Tanzanian waters for example, Tanzania is not under obligation to arrest the vessel on behalf of Kenya.

Tuna for example, is a highly migratory fish species and one of the most illegally fished due to the lack of government co-operation in patrolling the waters. And to make matters worse, a lot of these illegal vessels are branded in a way that makes it almost impossible to trace their origin, Prof Akpalu added.

“The fishing sector is one of the most corrupt in any country. The governments themselves are often involved in illegal fishing. They cut under the table deals with the illegal vessels,” he said.

The African Union is now pushing for the harmonisation of the fisheries laws across the continent, but this means that countries will have to surrender some of the political control they hold over their nations, which they are unwilling to do.

Research shows that by the year 2025, the world will need 50 million tonnes more fish to feed the people. But although the focus is now shifting to aquaculture to produce the demand, it will limit the kind of fish man eats because most fish eat fish. It takes seven kilogrammes of fish for example, to grow one kilo of salmon, research shows.

And by 2050, there will be more plastics in the oceans than fish, which will, inevitably kill the fish if urgent measures are not taken.