Protecting Sharks from Overexploitation: The Role and Impact of Regional Fisheries Management Organisations

Abstract

Sharks are essential to the maintaining of healthy marine ecosystems. In the last decade, despite existing rules, shark mortality has risen. This is due to a variety of threats, the main one being exploitation. As shark species are of transboundary nature, cooperation is key to their conservation and management. Such cooperation has been exercised by States through Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and their scope now covers most of the world's oceans. Given the importance of sharks, the role that RFMOs play in the law of the sea and the fact there is no shark-specific binding treaty currently in force, the aim of the present work is to determine the extent to which regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) should protect sharks from overexploitation. It does so by, first, studying the obligations of States under international law in mitigating shark threats related to exploitation and by highlighting the weaknesses of the international legal framework in that regard. Second, it looks into the competences of RFMOs and gives an overview of the conservation and management measures already in place. Third, it evaluates the extent to which RFMOs have implemented their obligations arising from international law and whether this implementation is enough to effectively protect sharks from overexploitation. Alongside legal sources - which are the main pillars of this thesis, scientific literature is used to assess what the weaknesses of existing legal framework are and how the implementation of new types of rules would better protect sharks from overexploitation from a practical standpoint.