ABSTRACT
In contrast, we have used examples from industrial fisheries to illustrate the historical development of property relations in the oceans, the role of (changing) powers in shaping them, and a historically, politically and ecologically contingent theory of rent. Our examples reveal that property relations have emerged out of multilateral negotiations, geo-political contestation and struggles over the influence of global production dynamics and the distribution of socio-economic benefits. In practice, states’ ability to appropriate ground-rent through sovereign rights over EEZs can be both threatened and augmented. Further, state-landed property is not always strictly territorially bounded: coastal states can at times have influence beyond the geographic boundaries of legal lines in the sea.
