Why we should protect the high seas from all extraction, forever
Summary
International waters, also known as the high seas, make up 61% of the ocean and cover 43% of Earth’s surface — amounting to two-thirds of the biosphere by volume. They have been exploited since the seventeenth century for whales, and from the mid-twentieth century for fish, sharks and squid, depleting wildlife. Now, climate change is reducing the productivity of the high seas through warming and through depletion of nutrients and oxygen. Proposals to fish for species at greater depths and mine the sea bed threaten to wreak yet more damage, putting the ocean’s crucial role in maintaining the stability of Earth’s biosphere at risk.
Less than 1% of the area of the high seas is protected, however. This is because there has been no globally accepted mechanism to do so beyond Antarctica. The United Nations High Seas Treaty was agreed in 2023 to fill this governance gap and expand the number of marine protected areas in international waters. It is crucial to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, as agreed under the Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.
