On October 3, 2018, the United States signed the multi-country Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Commercial Fishing on the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean. The object of the agreement is to apply precautionary conservation and management measures to ensure the sustainable use of fish stocks in waters outside the jurisdictions of the signatory nations. While the agreement has a laudable purpose, it is susceptible to being undermined by non-parties, and should have taken the form of a treaty, not an executive agreement.
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On August 27, 2019, the U.S. announced that it had ratified the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Commercial Fishing on the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.REF The object of the agreement is to apply precautionary conservation and management measures to ensure the sustainable use of fish stocks in waters outside the jurisdictions of the signatory nations. Although the agreement has a laudable purpose, it should have taken the form of a treaty, not an executive agreement. The U.S. should remedy the agreement’s defects of substance and process by seeking to replace it with a multilateral treaty covering all major fishing nations.