ABSTRACT
Many transitional states may see the Flag of Convenience (FOC) industry as an easy short-term solution to a pressing and immediate need for foreign investment. Despite advances in fishing technology, fishery requires luck and judgment in equal measure. Living sea turtles can be worth three times as much as dead ones, and it is often developing, coastal states that benefit from the tourism trade that follows such creatures. Panamanian, Honduran, and Belizean regulations threatened to impinge on FOC vessels' unfettered ability to make money, the closure of registries in Cambodia and Sierra Leone may have only marginally inconvenienced the vessels' owners. These 'front companies' constitute the public face of a highly complex, transnational corporate structure that deliberately disguises the identity of the corporation's beneficial owners and corporations. Under these new market measures, it is increasingly the case that the requirement to 'do something' falls on the vessel owners and not on states.
