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Who Actually Owns the Ocean? · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Almost half of the planet belongs to no country at all, and for
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  decades, much of it had been treated like a resource free-for-all.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekly ocean news update.
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  If you care about staying informed on the ocean every single weekday, Monday
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  to Friday, hit that follow button on your favorite podcast app now, so
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  you don't miss tomorrow's story.
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  Today, we're answering a deceptively simple question.
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  Who actually owns the ocean?
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  Look, the ocean covers 71% of the planet.
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  Every country manages about 200 nautical miles off of their coastline,
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  so what happens to the rest of it?
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  Because when we hear terms like high seas or international waters, most people
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  picture open ocean far from shore and assume someone has to be in charge.
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  But the reality is much more complicated.
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  And that complexity is one of the biggest reasons ocean conservation
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  has struggled for decades.
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  So the definition of the high seas is basically open areas
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  outside of any country's borders.
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  So every coastal nation controls waters close to shore through what's called
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  the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.
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  It generally stretches out for about two hundred nautical miles
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  from the country's coastline.
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  Inside those waters, countries control fishing rights, oil exploration, shipping
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  regulations, and conservation measures.
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  But once you move beyond those boundaries, you enter the high seas.
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  And to be honest, they're massive.
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  And I've covered a number of episodes on the high seas over the years, but I
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  want to reset today and just really talk about, you know, the high seas
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  and who owns it, especially today.
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  And this week, we're gonna be talking all about the high seas.
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  We have a really great episode at the end of the week where we do an interview with
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  the director of the High Seas Alliance.
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  We talk all about what's coming up this year, why is this is such a
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  big year in 2026 for the high seas.
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  So we're talking nearly half of the surface of the Earth for the high seas.
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  Like, just the high seas.
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  Like, taking out the exclusive economic zones, just the high seas.
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  That means the largest ecosystem on the planet exists mostly outside
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  any direct national control.
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  That's a pretty big amount.
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  It's a lot of responsibility for nobody.
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  That's a hard thing to wrap around your head.
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  Imagine if half the Amazon rainforest belonged to nobody.
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  Imagine if there were almost no enforceable protections around that.
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  Imagine if countries, corporations, and industries could operate
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  there with limited oversight.
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  That's essentially what the world has allowed to happen
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  in large parts of the ocean.
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  Historically, the high seas were built around the concept of freedom.
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  Freedom to navigate, freedom to fish, freedom to conduct commerce.
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  And for centuries, that made sense because people believed the
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  ocean was too large to damage.
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  It's so big.
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  Like, it's this massive empty space.
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  We can't do any damage to it.
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  But industrial technology changed everything.
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  The Industrial Revolution just changed absolutely everything.
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  Now, massive fishing fleets can operate thousands of kilometers from shore.
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  Deep sea mining companies want access to untouched ecosystems.
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  And cargo shipping crosses nearly every ocean basin.
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  And climate change is stressing marine life everywhere at the same time.
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  The ocean may feel endless, but it's no longer beyond human impact.
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  In fact, every part of the ocean has been impacted by humans.
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  And it's really shown when you go to the deepest part of the ocean, the
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  Mariana Trench, and you actually see plastic pollution in the Mariana Trench.
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  And here's why this matters to everyday people like yourself.
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  The high seas help regulate the climate.
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  I'm gonna say that one more time.
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  The high seas help regulate the climate.
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  And this is huge because when we talk about climate change, we rarely talk about
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  the ocean, unless you're on this podcast and you're talking to a marine biologist.
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  Climate change has to do with ocean, and ocean has to do with climate change.
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  They are interchangeable.
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  But these high seas, they support migratory species like tuna,
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  sharks, whales, and sea turtles.
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  They connect ecosystems across entire ocean basins.
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  And they help support global food systems.
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  So what happens in the high seas does not stay in the high seas.
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  It's not like Vegas.
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  It's not like Vegas one bit.
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  If tuna populations collapse offshore, coastal fisheries suffer too.
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  If biodiversity disappears in deep ocean ecosystems, we may lose
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  species before we even discover them.
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  And one of the biggest problems is visibility.
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  Most people never see what happens far offshore.
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  We'll see the plastic on beaches.
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  We may see the coral bleaching.
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  But industrial activity in the open ocean often happens out of sight.
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  That makes accountability harder.
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  And this is what, to be honest, not that I'm a huge fan of what they've
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  done in the past, but Sea Shepherd has done for decades, is they've actually
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  gone out into the high seas, even though nobody can really stop them
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  from doing anything, and they've gotten in the way of Japanese whalers.
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  They've chased down illegal fishing boats from all over the world.
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  They've been able to do this because it works on the high seas.
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  There's nobody to stop the Sea Shepherd from doing anything, and there's
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  nobody to stop the illegal fishers and the illegal whalers from doing the
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  damage that they wanna do to the ocean.
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  So it makes accountability harder, even if you're trying to do conservation or
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  if you're not trying to do conservation, or you're trying to protect conservation.
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  And enforcement becomes incredibly difficult when vessels are operating
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  days or weeks away from land.
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  This is part of the reason ocean advocates pushed so hard for the High
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  Seas Treaty, which we're gonna be talking about tomorrow and the rest of the
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  week, to be honest, and to be honest,
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  for a long, long time.
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  Because the ocean can't function effectively as disconnected pieces.
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  Marine life, it does not recognize political borders.
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  They don't recognize the exclusive economic zone.
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  Ocean currents do not stop at exclusive economic lines, and that's where
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  like fisheries will be huge part.
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  I've talked about this before on the podcast.
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  There is a squid fishery that starts within the exclusive economic zone of
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  Argentina along the coast, but then eventually that fishery was gonna go
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  over that border where there are a long line of distant water fleets, like
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  Chinese fleets and other countries' fleets, who are waiting for those squids
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  a certain time of year 'cause they know they go over the exclusive economic
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  zone, and they'll fish them, and they'll try and grab as many possible 'cause
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  there's nobody to hold them accountable.
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  The ocean is connected, but governance has remained fragmented.
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  And that's an important piece, right?
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  It's an important piece to talk about how these governance system gets
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  fragmented because you can't hold people accountable in the high seas.
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  It's pretty much the Wild Wild West if you think about it in that way.
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  But we can provide the information, and now with the High Seas Treaty, which we're
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  gonna talk about tomorrow, we can provide that information, and we can give you the
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  answers so that you can make responsible decisions on what is coming from the high
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  seas, whether it's seafood, whatever goes to the high seas like plastic pollution.
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  You can make those decisions.
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  And that's what we try to do here on the podcast, and if you're getting value
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  from that on this podcast and you're getting that information so you can make
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  a better decision, I'd love for you to hit that follow button right now on
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  your favorite podcast app so that you don't miss any of the other episodes
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  that we're gonna be doing, not only this week, but later on in the future.
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  That's what we really wanna do.
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  Now, what happens next?
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  So now the big question becomes, can the world actually
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  govern the high seas effectively.
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  We know that nobody really owns it, but can we do that?
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  And that's where the High Seas Treaty enters the story.
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  The treaty claims to create a framework for protecting biodiversity
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  beyond national jurisdiction.
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  In simpler terms, it creates a pathway for marine protected
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  areas in international waters.
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  That's a huge shift and a huge challenge to come forward because
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  until recently, creating meaningful protections in those areas was
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  incredibly difficult politically because just nobody was there to manage it.
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  You couldn't even enforce it because there's no jurisdiction.
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  So anybody who went in there to fish, if, say, fishing was gonna be blocked for
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  that marine protected area, anybody that went in there, well, it doesn't matter.
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  They can get away with whatever they want because nobody has jurisdiction.
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  But this is where it gets really complicated.
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  A treaty alone does not automatically protect the ocean.
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  Countries still need to ratify it, and they need to agree on enforcement.
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  They need funding, they need monitoring systems, and they need political will.
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  This is the part that Rebecca Hubbard emphasized repeatedly in conversations
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  around the treaty, which we're gonna be talking about on Friday.
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  From now until Thursday, this is the setup for our Friday interview.
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  And the agreement for the treaty creates this type of opportunity, but
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  implementation determines success, and that's true for almost every
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  conservation effort that we've seen.
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  Protection only works when it becomes real in the water, not just on paper.
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  We've talked about that for a long time about marine protected areas.
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  So the high seas are not just some like distant place disconnected from our lives.
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  We know that we affect change that happens, whether good or bad,
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  among the ocean basins, across the ocean basins, everywhere in the
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  ocean, because we have that effect.
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  We're humans.
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  We have this ability to do that.
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  But the high seas, they help stabilize the planet.
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  They support marine life, and they influence the future of the ocean itself.
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  And for the first time in history, the world is trying to build a
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  system to protect them collectively.
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  And that matters because the ocean story is really a shared responsibility.
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  That's what it is.
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  It's a shared responsibility story.
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  And this story is what we're gonna be talking about for the rest of this week.
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  The High Seas Treaty, which we'll talk about, focus on tomorrow, was
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  just ratified finally by 60 countries.
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  Now I think we're up to 89 countries the last time I checked.
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  That will kinda tell who is involved.
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  So we're at about just over half of the countries in the world, and we
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  can see that things are starting to collectively get really great, and we're
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  gonna start to see some really great things that are happening in the future.
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  We just need more countries to ratify, including my own
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  Canada has not ratified yet.
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  We hope that they'll ratify within the year.
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  Not sure what's really happening there.
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  They haven't really spoken about it.
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  There's some other things that are distracting them, I think, that are
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  happening in the world, but that is no excuse because we just do not have
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  the time to wait to protect the ocean.
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  That has to happen as soon as possible, like yesterday, and the
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  day before, and the day before that.
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  So that's it for today's episode.
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  There are a lot of podcasts in these podcast stores, whether it's
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  There's a lot of competition out there, and there's some great podcasts
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  However, for us to kinda get in front of other people's faces, we
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  like to get up into those charts.
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  And the more you follow, the higher we get.
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  And plus you don't miss any other episodes.
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  So just from a selfish reason, for yourself, like let's do it.
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  If you wanna learn more about the ocean, this is the podcast to do it with.
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  All right.
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  That's it for today's episode.
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  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  If you wanna get ahold of me, just check the show notes.
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  Until next time, have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you tomorrow, and happy conservation.