ABSTRACT
This chapter derives from author's ongoing research into the governance of tuna fisheries globally, and specifically in the Western Pacific region, since the late 1990s. It first, argues that the consideration of several mythic themes is particularly important to understand international fishing governance. Second, there is the mythic theme that gloss as atomism, expressing ideas that ocean creatures and governance bodies exist and act at an individual level. Environmental governance has been thought of as something governments do nationally, and when issues and activities spread across national borders they become the purview of the intergovernmental system, embodied by the United Nations institutions. The myths of governance, and the institutions and actions founded on them, must also be shifted, and this process of change is messy and piecemeal. The guiding institutional myth that fisheries can be damaged by overfishing and this should be managed through government application of science remained, but alongside it a related myth of ecological devastation emerged.
