Galapagos: how to protect the islands’ amazing marine life from huge Chinese fishing fleets

MaREI Researcher Sarah Ryan Enright writes for The Conversation on how more than 300 foreign fishing ships, almost all Chinese, have been sitting in international waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands since late July. The islands, nearly 1,000 km from the coast of Ecuador, are best-known for their unique wildlife.

Sarah is doing her PhD on ‘Effective Marine Governance: The role of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in conserving and sustaining marine biodiversity’, funded through the Navigate project

“This latest incident is a stark reminder of the incongruous nature of the law of the sea, which recognises that the ocean is an interrelated whole yet takes a zonal approach to regulation that results in a mismatch between law and natural ecosystems. International waters, or the “high seas”, make up 61% of the ocean but a fragmented legal framework allows only weak regulation of human activities”

You can read the full article here