ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1655535
Transformative Pathways towards Good Governance in High Seas Fisheries
Provisionally accepted
Wei Yuan1
Shuli Han2*- 1School of Ocean Law and Humanities, Dalian Ocean University, Dalian, China
- 2School of law, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
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The principle of high seas fishing freedom, while historically significant, has increasingly revealed systemic shortcomings amid accelerating globalization and technological advances in fisheries. Over centuries, high seas fisheries governance has evolved from unregulated exploitation to managed operations, yet substantial challenges persist in achieving sound governance. Key issues include deficiencies in legal frameworks, insufficient international cooperation, inadequate regional fisheries management, and rampant IUU fishing. Guided by the Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Ocean Decade, this study proposes a governance transformation pathway through legislative and practical approaches, advocating strengthened legal frameworks and enhanced international cooperation across multiple levels to facilitate the transition from unrestricted fishing freedom to sustainable governance, engaging sovereign states, regional organizations and corporate entities in this process.
Keywords: Ocean Good Governance, Freedom of High Seas Fishing, Fishery resources, pathway analysis, Shared responsibility
Received: 28 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yuan and Han. 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: Shuli Han, hanshuli@jnu.edu.cn
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