ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1596492
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives Volume IIView all 22 articles
From Value Recognition to Effective Implementation: The Main Problems and Strengthening Paths of Law Enforcement to Combat IUU Fishing
Provisionally accepted
Linlin Chen
Yuejun He*- Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
As a cornerstone institutional arrangement for marine fishery resource conservation, the legal efficacy of IUU fishing prohibitions is fundamentally contingent upon the standardized enforcement capacities of fishery law enforcement personnel. This study investigates the institutional disjuncture between statutory prohibitions against illegal fishing and their practical implementation. Empirical evidence derived from 526 structured questionnaires and 195(37.1% of the 526) in-depth interviews with enforcement officers across four coastal provinces(Nearly 30% of coastal provinces in China)reveals structural contradictions within the current enforcement framework:On the one hand, cognitive dissonance regarding the ecological value of fishing bans among certain officers has precipitated deficient value internalization. On the other, skepticism about the legitimacy of legal norms has engendered multiple enforcement anomalies -including but not limited to selective enforcement, passive evidence collection, sentencing disparity, and administrative-criminal procedure linkage barriers. These institutional implementation defects substantially constrain marine ecological governance efficacy.To address this institutional predicament, a systematic governance framework is proposed:Value dimension: Establish sustainable value-shaping mechanisms through capacity-building programs to foster long-term ecological consciousness;Regulatory dimension: Develop precision-engineered administrative-criminal linkage protocols to ensure coherent legal implementation;Operational dimension: Forge a three-dimensional governance architecture integrating administrative enforcement, criminal justice, and public interest litigation to construct a comprehensive "administrative-criminal-civil" liability regime.Through synergistic advancement in value recognition reconstruction, regulatory execution reinforcement, and innovative governance practices, this tripartite approach projects to enhance IUU fishing enforcement efficacy, thereby institutionalizing sustainable utilization of marine fishery resources.
Keywords: KEYWORD IUU fishing, fishery law enforcement, value recognition, normative recognition, Norm implementation
Received: 19 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuejun He, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.