ABSTRACT
One way to develop rules for the management and efficient exploitation of high seas resources is for a preponderant actor – a hegemon – to impose them on the other actors. Both the US and Russia at different times tried to nationalize the fur seal in the north Pacific high seas with the aim of efficiently managing the stock (see Chapter 11). They didn’t succeed. However, as discussed in Section 2, the Russian Federation in the early 1990s de facto nationalized the pollock stock in the high seas area of the Sea of Okhotsk known as the “peanut hole”, giving itself powers over the setting of total allowable catch and access by distant water fishing nations. Section 3 looks at the role afforded to the USA under the Convention to manage pollock stocks in the Bering Sea “doughnut hole” – also an area of high seas – which, while not amounting to de facto nationalization did give the USA extra bargaining leverage compared with that of the other signatories.
