Why did the California sardine disappear? And other mysteries of the deep.

• Author: Pontecorvo, Giulio

The end of one century and the beginning of the next provide us a vantage point to look back and see how fisheries policy and practice have evolved over the last 50 years and to articulate what is likely to happen in the proximate future. This discussion will focus on the role played by the United Nations and its agency, FAO. Space does not permit more than a passing reference to such unique contributions made by the United Nations in the crafting of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, ratified as an international law and accepted as customary international law by the United States and a few other non-signatory nations.

Today, we are bombarded by reminders of the crises--real and imagined--involving the deteriorating condition of the world's oceans: increasing levels of pollution, destruction of habitat in coastal zones, and the vanishing fish. No one can deny that a number of key fisheries are in a desperate state, e.g. the Northwest Atlantic cod. But how they got that way and what to do about it is a complex story. The United Nations has been involved in the management of commercial fisheries in three major ways: developing the articles on fisheries contained in the Law of the Sea Convention; ongoing negotiations involving numerous fisheries treaties; and through the work of the FAO Fisheries Division. The evolution of FAO since it became part of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War gives us a key to understanding some of the problems of fisheries today.

Its first major contribution was the development of a worldwide statistical reporting system. For the first time, it was possible to know the physical volume of fish caught, what fish and other organisms made up the catch, where it was caught and who were the major fishing nations.

Over the years, this system has been improved and refined. Now it is available electronically and is the principal aggregate measure of the status of the world's fish resources. However, looking forward, there is still a pressing need to expand the data set primarily to include more economic information, which is needed for management and the modelling of the economies of fisheries. Unfortunately, FAO is dependent upon the fishing nations to supply this economic and all other data, so that it can only compile what the nations are willing to supply.

FAO has made progress in other areas as well. Initially, its mission was primarily to assist developing nations improve their fisheries. This...