Poorly regulated international waters make up almost 95% of the global ocean
Unpacking one of the most important treaties you’ve never heard of and that still doesn’t exist.
Despite nearly a decade of talks between international leaders, scientists and conservationists, the 193 delegates of the United Nations still have not drafted a set of laws that would regulate the high seas, a.k.a. our oceans’ international waters. There are very few laws protecting life in international waters, and what laws do exist are seldom enforced. This November, world leaders will meet for COP27 to contemplate what humans should do to intervene in climate change and halt the destruction of precious ecosystems. In the past, these conferences have been more talk than action — and too often the ocean is overlooked in these discussions as the planet’s climate regulator.
The latest talks about the High Seas Treaty, an international set of protections for our world’s oceans, turned up the same result back in August. The talks started in 2004 and many expected to finally have a plan for how to move forward. We still don’t.
We’re just at the beginning of understanding what treasures these deep, remote parts of the seas are home to –– but we do know, for example, that the cold-water corals, sponge fields, seamounts and hydrothermals are home to creatures found nowhere else on the blue planet. It’s vital that the world’s nations come up with a plan to protect them.
Scientists and some 84 countries now support the 30x30 initiative, agreeing we must set aside at least 30% of the oceans in marine protected areas (MPAs) or fully protected marine reserves if we want to safeguard biodiversity and build resilience to climate change. The United Nations set a goal to protect 10% of our oceans by 2020. But in 2022, only 8% are protected. Here’s what the high seas are, why it’s critical that we protect them, and a brief history of the promised High Seas Treaty that still doesn’t exist.
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Over half of our oceans are international waters
International waters, or high seas, include any part of our oceans that sit 200 miles or more from sovereign land (a place with its own government). It’s a huge area that includes 58% of the ocean's surface and about 95% of the world’s oceans in terms of volume. Without a treaty, less than 1% of these high seas are protected, and they don’t fall under any one country’s jurisdiction. Unlike on land, there is no legal framework for the high seas when it comes to creating areas that are off-limits to commercial activity, like shipping or fishing.
United Nations member states began discussing the importance of drafting a set of international laws that would apply to, and protect, international waters back in 2004, and have met every two years since. In theory, the treaty would set guidelines for fishing, mining, shipping and any other commercial activity that takes place in these waters. This activity threatens biodiversity and accelerates climate change.
Back in 2020, it seemed like they were going to reach a deal. But they didn’t, in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Fast forward to August, when the U.N. delegates ran out of time when discussing everything the treaty should say. So the regulation has once again been kicked down the road.
What’s in the treaty?
The treaty aims to use a coordinated international effort to protect all forms of marine life, from plankton to blue whales. It also ensures that developing nations have equal access to resources. So far, the rough draft includes 4 issues the treaty will regulate:
Marine Protected Areas
(MPAs)
Creating protected areas of international waters that limit or completely exclude activities like fishing, mining, shipping and even tourism.
Environmental Impact Assessments
(EIAs)
Scientists will evaluate any proposed activity in the high seas that could impact the environment.
Access & Benefit Sharing of
Marine Genetic Resources
This ensures that not only wealthy nations have access to biological resources and discoveries made in the high seas.
Capacity-Building & Marine
Technology Transfer
Ensuring that “developing nations” have the capacity, technology, educational and research opportunities necessary to participate in deep sea science.
A push to exclude fishing
In February, 50 countries formed a coalition aimed at expediting the drafting of the High Seas Treaty. At the same time, other countries, including Russia and Iceland, have asked to exclude fishing from the treaty. If fishing is left out, the consequences will be major. Although it still takes place across the oceans, industrial, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing exploits under-patrolled international waters in particular. Seafood Watch estimates that 1 in 5 wild caught fish come from illegal, unreported or unregulated sources. With little to no oversight, fishing vessels use environmentally devastating techniques in international waters.
Young shark as bycatch in industrial fishing / Image: Andreas Altenburger
One of the biggest reasons industrial fishing is harmful is because it’s non-selective. This means that although a vessel might be after one type of fish — popular species like salmon and halibut — they often catch a ton of other sea life that isn’t eaten. There are many destructive, non-selective fishing methods, but bottom trawling stands out as a significant offender. Bottom trawling is a method of fishing in which a ship drags heavy nets along the seafloor in an attempt to scoop up as many fish as possible, disregarding the species, age or size of what they catch. Some shrimp trawling nets are filled with 90% bycatch. Bycatch is usually thrown back into the water either dying or already dead.
“Legal” and illegal fishing, especially long lines and bottom trawling are not helping with food security so much as they are feeding luxury tastes,” says Liz Taylor is the President of DOER Marine. These destructive fishing techniques are not the only reason we desperately need more regulation of fishing in the high seas.
Ian Urbina (left) / Image: The Outlaw Ocean Project
LAWLESSNESS ON THE HIGH SEAS
Where laws and regulations do exist, enforcement remains a colossal issue on under-patrolled waters. The high seas are mostly “unpoliced” — vigilante conservation operations and organizations like Sea Shepherd have emerged to fill the gap, pursuing renegade trawlers and illegal vessels operating with impunity on international waters.
With little accountability at sea, human rights abuses are a huge problem in international waters, especially in the fishing industry. The industry uses slavery and human trafficking to trap people aboard ships, often forcing them to work without pay.
Investigative journalist Ian Urbina has spent years uncovering accounts of human rights abuses tied to the fishing industry as part of The Outlaw Ocean Project. Read more about how the seafood industry is rife with slavery, illegal fleets and human rights violations and catch an episode of his brand new CBC podcast series, Outlaw Ocean, that dropped on September 26th.
Fishing gear collected during a Parley beach cleanup in Australia / Image: Christian Miller
Commercial activity brings more plastic pollution
Fishing gear accounts for roughly 10% of the more than 12 million tons of plastic that end up in our seas every year. Abandoned nets, lines and ropes — ghost fishing gear — now make up almost half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The High Seas are far from the only place in our oceans that is suffering from plastic pollution, but without regulations on commercial activity in these waters, we have no idea what's out there and what IUU fishing activity is dropping below the surface.
A growing shipping industry
About 90% of goods are transported via the seas. And as climate change melts ice, new shipping routes are opening up in the high seas. While these routes could cut the CO2 emissions of the existing shipping industry, they would also incentivize even more shipping (and the noise, carbon dioxide and plastic pollution that brings to the oceans).
Researchers have found that in the past 50 years, low-frequency noise along major shipping routes has increased by more than 30-fold. This noise pollution drives marine animals away from vital breeding and feeding grounds. The shipping industry is also responsible for oil and gasoline spills, catastrophic plastic pollution emergencies and about 1 billion metric tons of carbon emissions every year.
When cargo ships aren’t full of goods, they fill their hulls with water — called ballast water — to weigh down the ships and make them more stable. As soon as they’re in port, they release this water, and the bacteria and creatures swimming in it, into a completely different part of the oceans. Sometimes these species are invasive and take over the native, healthy, ecosystem.
A risky plan to map the planet’s last frontier
Antarctic seafloor / Image: Steve Clabuesch
Some scientists are heading a push to map the seafloor. The endeavor is well underway, but some experts worry having such detailed information on Earth’s last frontier will open up the deep sea to further exploitation, especially deep sea drilling and mining in ecosystems we still know little about.
Oil spills are far from the only marine damage wrought by deep sea oil wells. Seismic activity from ocean oil rigs creates inhospitable conditions for the marine animals that live there. And as climate change brings more natural disasters like hurricanes, deep sea wells are ticking time bombs.
Oil also isn’t the only valuable resource that humans are after. An estimated $150 trillion in gold lies beneath the sea bed, and corporations have long had their sights set on other rare metals, like cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese, that are used in smartphones, computers and the growing array of electronics that have become ubiquitous parts of everyday life. To uncover these metals, robots would strip the seafloor, much like mountaintop removal mining does on land.
“We’ve barely finished mapping this biodiversity-rich terrain, and already there’s an effort to exploit it,” says Dawn Wright, chief scientist at Esri, one of the companies working to map the seafloor in an effort to better protect the oceans.
If used for good, having a clear picture of the ocean floor will be a crucial piece of the climate puzzle, says Wright. It will allow scientists to understand what areas can be safely fished and which cannot. With a clear, 3D model of our oceans’ volume, we will be able to better understand how heat circulates in the oceans, which will allow us to build better climate change models. In the wrong hands, this information could cause irreparable damage to ecosystems we haven’t met yet.
“We simply don’t know enough about how dredging and extracting minerals from the bottom of the ocean will affect ecosystems and emissions, but the environmental costs could far outstrip the economic benefits if we don’t have a sufficient understanding of the consequences,” says Wright.
In 2018, the University of Hawai’i’s partnered with the exploration company DOER to gather information about a part of the deep Pacific Ocean between Hawai’i and Mexico, called the Clipperton Fracture Zone, or CCZ, part of which was mined in the 1960s. The teams documented a host of new species hidden beneath the deep seas. The team also recorded the area that was test mined in the 1960s. By 2018, the area still had zero evidence of recovery.
In recent years, the site has been green lighted for additional test mining, meaning companies are able to explore what mining the areas might turn up. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the organization that manages mining in international waters, awarded 16 exploration contracts that allow corporations and state entities to assess mining opportunities within the Clipperton Fracture Zone. Some worry that having a detailed map would give more information to projects like these.
“Most deep sea exploration is conducted with an eye towards potential extraction,” says Liz Taylor, president of DOER.
Scientists have only just started taking inventory of life in the deep oceans. An influx of corporations scouring mapped parts of the seafloor would do irreparable damage to the marine food web and destroy life we don’t even know about yet.
“The mapping of the seafloor effort is laudable,” says Taylor, noting that having a detailed map of the ocean floor helps scientists understand the terrain. “But it’s an incomplete picture without actual time spent in situ observing, sampling and documenting along the way.”
What can we do to protect the High Seas right now?
“Less conversation and more action is needed, and needed now,” says Taylor. And while individual action should never be the only focus of calls for change and accountability, small actions can be the best way to make a difference when protections are in political limbo.
Here are Liz Taylor’s 7 things that can lead to infinite positive actions:
Be a smarter consumer, especially with electronics
Support companies that use recycled materials and that have a solid plan for battery recycling or reuse. Electronics are made with rare Earth metals scraped from the Earth (and seabed).
Use the stuff you buy for a long time
Demand that manufacturers build and sell repairable goods, support those that do, and recycle the stuff you buy when you can’t use it any longer. Pass on the fast fashion hauls and instead invest in staple clothing pieces that will last you years.
Buy local
Noise pollution on the high seas is another issue that’s rarely discussed but which has a heavy impact on wildlife. If you buy locally made items that didn’t have to be shipped on the high seas to get to you, you reduce your noise pollution impact.
Push to end subsidies for extractive activities
This includes industrial fishing, mining and large scale agriculture, especially factory farming. A significant amount of wild caught fish goes to feeding chickens and pigs. These subsidies vary by country and even region. And while Taylor recognizes that many people on Earth rely on locally caught fish as their main source of protein, eating seafood brought to your plate through industrial fishing, especially on the high seas, is “an abomination.”
Create local change
Federal change takes a long time. Start with your local town or city council to work on issues like wastewater and plastics, which ultimately impact the high seas and our own health.
Use less energy
More than 60% of global energy still comes from fossil fuels, so cutting back on the energy you consume is an important individual action, especially air conditioning and leaving a lot of lights on. These two energy sucks have a disproportionately high impact on energy consumption. The good news is, their impact can be significantly reduced by cutting back on their use.
TAKE ACTION
Read up, make noise, spread the word and give others the tools to do the same. Systemic change won’t come unless we demand it.
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