Highly Migratory Species

Highly migratory species comprise those species listed in Annex I of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Annex includes eight species of tuna (the most commercially important), frigate mackerel, pomfrets, marlins, sail-fishes, swordfish, sauries, dolphin, oceanic sharks and cetaceans. Most of them migrate considerable distances during their life cycle through the exclusive economic zone (EEZs) of two or more States as well as on the high seas beyond.

 

Coastal States and other States whose nationals fish in the EEZ or on the high seas for highly migratory fishes are to co-operate over the conservation and management of such species directly or through appropriate international organisations which either exist or which they must establish (Article 64 and 1995 Straddling Stocks Agreement). To date only a few regional organisations or arrangements, which are more and less effective, exist and only for tuna. The oldest Commission is the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, which was established by the Convention of the same name signed in 1949 to regulate yellow-fish and skipjack tuna fishing in the Eastern Pacific.

 

Commissions' functions are to carry out scientific research and recommend conservation measures with the objective to maintain populations of tuna at levels which will permit the maximum sustainable catch for food and other purposes. Minimum size for tropical tuna, blue-fin tuna and swordfish; and limits on fishing mortality for blue-fin tuna are among the measures adopted by the 1966 International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna. Quotas imposed on blue-fina tuna harvests in the western North Atlantic has resulted in fisheries operations being moved to the North Pacific Ocean where no international agreement exists.