Can High Seas Protected Areas Actually Work?

0:00 Creating a marine protected area thousands of kilometers offshore sounds impressive, but how do you actually enforce it? This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, Monday to Friday, hit that follow button right now on your favorite podcast app, so you do not miss tomorrow's story. Today, we are talking about one of the biggest questions surrounding the High Seas Treaty, which we talked about yesterday. Can marine protected areas actually work on the high seas? Now, if you don't know, if you don't know me at all, if this is your first time or you haven't listened to me in a while, I haven't talked a lot about my background. I do have a background as I did a master's in marine protected areas.

0:43 I was on the board for an organization called Pacific Marine Research Analysis, PACMARA. And we talked a lot about marine protected areas, looking at data, matching science with policy, all that kinda stuff. I've been involved in a lot of marine protected areas, not necessarily marine protected area, like processes and stuff like that, but I know quite a bit about marine protected areas. Definitely not an expert, but I know quite a bit. And so this actually matters to me this topic a lot, a lot more than a lot of the other ones because I have a bit of a background in it. And knowing that marine protected areas, even in exclusive economic zones where there's national jurisdiction, how hard it is to designate, imagine doing it in an area where there's no national jurisdiction. It's the high seas, and now with the High Seas Treaty, we are going to be putting in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth marine protected area ever.

1:28 So this is historic, but it's also... it has a lot of questions. Because, like, when you're talking about the high seas, you can announce it, that's one thing, but enforcing it is completely different. A marine protected area, or MPA, is essentially an ocean zone where human activity is restricted to protect ecosystems and biodiversity. So some MPAs limit fishing, some restrict, like mining or any kind of activity. Sometimes they reduce shipping impacts or protect critical habitats. Near coastlines is difficult enough, obviously. But now imagine doing it, trying to monitor something in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. An area so large it takes days to reach by boat. You're not gonna have a coast guard patrolling there all the time.

2:10 And this is the challenge facing high seas conservation. And historically, it has been one of the biggest weaknesses in ocean protection. We just didn't know how to enforce the high seas because there's no jurisdiction. A country can declare protection, but if nobody monitors the area, illegal activity can still happen. That even happens within national boundaries like the exclusive economic zone. If you don't have the resources to put together, an enforcement package where you have coast guard going out and actually looking at these places, satellites and planes and all this kind of stuff, there's really no point in protecting it at all. It just becomes a paper park. And that's why scientists and advocates increasingly focus on the difference between paper parks and real protection. A paper park looks great, you know, politically. It's great to announce, but real protection changes the outcomes in the water.

2:54 So if you're protecting for biodiversity, and you don't measure that, and you don't enforce, like, people coming in on their boats and fishing all the... whatever they can find, then leaving or destroying a habitat because they're trawling and they're just digging up the bottom trying to catch as many fish as possible, then you're not really gonna protect anything. If you are trying to increase abundance and biomass of a specific fisheries to protect fisheries, we can't allow fisheries to happen in the marine protected area. But how do you enforce that? So enforcement may be the most underrated part of conversation. We don't talk about it a lot. What we always mention as conservationists and scientists, we're like, "Oh, yeah, well, it's not enforced, so it really doesn't really matter." Studies have repeatedly shown that protected areas only succeed when rules are actually followed, and that doesn't happen often.

3:37 A lot of people try and get away with a lot of stuff. That means, you know, you need staffing, you need funding, you have monitoring systems, you need political support for sure, and consequences for violations. This becomes incredibly difficult offshore. Like recently, there was a video of a man throwing a rock at a critically endangered species off the coast of Hawaii he threw a rock at a Hawaiian monk seal. Now, these monk seals, like I said, they're on the endangered species list. They are protected. If you harass it or you hurt it in any kind of way, you can be charged, and this guy was charged. And, you know, somebody videoed it, and you probably know the story. It went viral over the last week and weekend. And he's being charged. He got arrested. He's being charged for it, and he also got beaten up by the locals.

4:18 That's a cultural thing. You don't mess with things that are culturally significant. You don't mess with animals anyway like that, but this guy got it a lot. But there was somebody there to video it. If not, he could've denied that ever even happened. Nothing happened to the seal. Nothing that we saw anyway. It looked like the rock missed it, thank God. But he could've just denied it, or he paid a little fine, and nobody would've made a big deal about it at all. He probably never would've gotten arrested. He may have still gotten beat up, but even then, nobody was there... if nobody was there to record it. Now, imagine somebody doing that on a ship out in the middle of the sea, and they threw something at an animal. Well, nobody would ever know because you can't be there to video all that, right? So if you can't do that, if you can't give consequences to people for violations, then it becomes really difficult, especially when you're looking offshore.

5:01 But of course, the technology is changing the equation. Now, we don't have people taking pictures out there, but satellite monitoring systems can now track vessel movement across huge ocean regions. AIS systems, which is like the GPS on the ships that track the ships, especially for shipping, but even for fisheries that do have it or have it turned on, they are designated to improve ship safety, but also help identify suspicious fishing behavior. They will be able to tell if a boat is in a marine protected area, and if it's slowed down to show that it's actually fishing. So organizations like Global Fishing Watch have helped expose activity that previously went unseen because they have all this data. That matters because visibility creates the accountability, and accountability creates that pressure on people who are not doing great things.

5:47 But there are still major gaps. Not all vessels keep tracking systems active. There was a study that came out saying that 75% of the fishing fleets don't actually put on their tracking system, so we don't know where they're fishing or how much they're fishing. Like, imagine that. You have, like, this great technology, but nobody's using it and nobody's being enforced to use it. So some governments have actually limited enforcement capacity, so they can't get out there to do it. And geopolitical tensions can complicate compliance. So the challenge is not just scientific, like we know the science. It's actually a political and economic one as well. It's an important part of the system. We know the science. We know overfishing is bad. We know that it happens all over the world.

6:27 That political and economic have to work together with the scientific. If it's science informed, that's one thing. But if you don't have the political will, just like we're not getting it in the US right now, which we typically would get it on a lot of things. It looks like they're trying to just strip away any kind of environmental law that's ever been activated just so they can do some pretty nefarious things with fossil fuels and so forth and cut up some pretty bad landscapes. And so, that is obviously a problem if you don't have that political will and of course you don't have that economic will to do so. So you don't want to see that happening So what happens next? The High Seas Treaty does create a possibility for more large-scale ocean protection, but success depends on whether countries commit resources to implementation.

7:08 There's one thing to commit to say, "Hey, this High Seas Treaty is really great," and then of course, to ratify it, that's another thing. But the actual thing to implement it and to enforce it, that's a huge thing. Because that's what success really depends on. It includes monitoring technology, scientific research, enforcement cooperation, transparency, long-term funding. All these things matter. And this is where, like, the public attention matters more than people realize. Because governments often respond to sustained pressure. And if we don't provide that pressure, then they're just gonna ignore it. When ocean issues disappear from the public conversation, the urgency fails. The government doesn't have to do anything. But when citizens and scientists and journalists and advocates keep paying attention, accountability becomes harder to ignore.

7:52 The next decade could define whether high seas protection becomes transformative or even symbolic. Marine protected areas only work when protection is measurable, enforceable, and real. The future of the high seas may depend less on drawing lines on a map and more on whether the world is willing, and I'm gonna say that again, is willing to enforce them. I'm gonna say that one more time. The future of the high seas depends less on drawing lines on maps and more on whether the world is willing to enforce them. That's what it really comes down to. As are we willing? After this high seas treaty, 20 years, two decades trying to put this together, finally agreeing to it, all the countries agreed to it, then you get 89 at this point to ratify it and more coming each and every day.

8:40 And then all of a sudden, you're not willing to enforce them, you're just signing this paper and saying, "Hey, yeah, we're willing to do this, but we're not actually gonna do anything." No, that's not happening, 'cause once you ratify, you actually have to put laws in place to say, "Hey, we now have a high seas policy in this country," whether it's Canada, United States, anywhere else. That's an important, important thing to remember. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you think countries are actually going to follow this? Is it gonna take a while? Is it gonna take 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? Are people gonna follow it at all? I'm sure there's some countries that are gonna be, like, off, but I would love to hear what you think. Hit me up on my socials. You can just go in the show notes. You can check that out. And of course, I'm always willing to chat on any social, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram.

9:22 Please let me know how you feel about these episodes. If you have questions or comments, you wanna have a conversation. This is just the start. We wanna continue having those conversations, whether you agree with me or not. I'm not mad at anybody. Just come with me. Don't be rude. Just be polite. We'll have conversations. It'll be a lot of fun, 'cause this is what we're gonna do. We talk about the ocean. Of course, don't forget, if you want to hear more about the ocean and you wanna hear more about how to protect it, especially about the high seas, this week is the week to follow this podcast by hitting that follow button right now on your favorite podcast app. And thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.