Ocean management futures practice questions.

A distant-water fishing fleet works 400 nautical miles from the nearest coast, well beyond any state's exclusive economic zone. Which statement describes how that area is governed under the Law of the Sea?

• It is territorial sea, so the nearest coastal state sets the quota
• It is unregulated, so no international rule of any kind applies there
• It is high seas, regulated by flag states and regional fisheries bodies
• It is an exclusive economic zone shared equally by all coastal states

Answer: It is high seas, regulated by flag states and regional fisheries bodies

High seas fishing is legal but not lawless: enforcement depends on the state whose flag the vessel flies and on regional fisheries management organisations, which is why compliance is uneven.

Counted by number of particles, most of the plastic accumulating in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is small fragments dispersed through the upper water column rather than large floating items. What does this imply for management?

• Surface skimming inside the gyre can recover most of the particles present
• Preventing plastic entering rivers matters more than ocean clean-up
• The fragments decompose within a few years, so no action is needed
• Closing the gyre to commercial fishing would remove most of the plastic

Answer: Preventing plastic entering rivers matters more than ocean clean-up

Once plastic has fragmented it is spread through a vast volume of water and is effectively unrecoverable, so the only efficient intervention is upstream, at the point where waste enters the river system.

Polymetallic nodules lie on the abyssal plain of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific, in an area beyond national jurisdiction. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which body must authorise their commercial extraction?

• The International Maritime Organization
• The International Whaling Commission
• The World Trade Organization
• The International Seabed Authority

Answer: The International Seabed Authority

The deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction is the common heritage of humankind under the Law of the Sea, so licensing sits with the International Seabed Authority rather than with any single state.

New Zealand manages several fisheries with individual transferable quotas: a total allowable catch is set and divided into shares that can be bought and sold. Which problem is this designed to solve?

• The race to fish, in which each boat maximises its share of a common stock
• The absence of any scientific estimate of the stock
• The tendency of fish to migrate across national boundaries
• The high cost of fuel for distant-water fleets

Answer: The race to fish, in which each boat maximises its share of a common stock

An open-access stock rewards whoever catches first, so effort escalates until the stock collapses. Giving each operator a secure share converts that incentive: the value of the quota depends on the stock recovering, so the holder gains from restraint.

The 2023 UN agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction addresses a gap in ocean governance. Which gap?

• The high seas lay outside any state's jurisdiction, so protected areas could not be created there
• Coastal states had no rights over fisheries within their own waters
• No state had ever agreed to limit pollution from ships
• Deep-sea mining had never been discussed internationally

Answer: The high seas lay outside any state's jurisdiction, so protected areas could not be created there

Beyond the exclusive economic zones, roughly two thirds of the ocean belonged to no single regulator, so there was no global legal mechanism for designating marine protected areas there. The agreement matters because it creates that mechanism, not because it designates any particular site.

The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument north-west of the main Hawaiian islands is a very large no-take marine protected area. Which factor most helps such an area succeed?

• Few resident users to displace, so compliance costs are low
• A high density of commercial ports inside the boundary
• A boundary drawn to follow national administrative lines
• An absence of any scientific monitoring, which reduces running costs

Answer: Few resident users to displace, so compliance costs are low

Very large remote reserves are politically cheap because almost nobody is excluded, which is exactly why critics call them the easy option: protection concentrates where conflict is least, not where pressure is greatest. Coastal reserves face the opposite problem.