NECESSITY

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Marine living resources (herein referred to as MLR) are organisms that inhabit water bodies such as oceans, seas, and others. The ocean and seas cover at least a third of the surface of the Earth and are home to an estimated 250,000 known species of marine living resources.   Over the past decades, MLR has come under enormous existential threat in different spheres, majorly from human activities such as over-exploitation, overfishing, extractions, and increased pollution.  In the aspect of pollution alone, it is estimated that over 1.7 million tons of plastic annually enter the ocean .  Boyle and Redgwell noted that microplastics are increasingly threatening marine life. Still, the recent climate change patterns have also rapidly become a threat to MLR, as witnessed by their effects on the “polar ecosystems and the change in the distribution of marine species.”  

 Additionally, as already highlighted, overfishing has become a driving force and threat to MLR; data from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (herein referred to as FAO) indicate an increase in fishing from 15 million tons in 1932 to 80 million tons in 1992, which has led to a substantial decline in the available number of stocks.   The increase in exploitation has been attributed to three significant factors: growing population,  poor fishing methods, and the introduction of new technology and advanced machines;  methods like “bottom trawling damages coral reefs and sea mounts, blast fishing using explosives destroy MRLR, Nylon driftnets float like a curtain and when lost at sea can trap species like seals, “on the other hand, there are new methods such as the use of sonar and satellites that locate fish and the use of freeze vessels that can store fish and stay for a more extended period in the ocean adding to the problem. Scholars have argued that such advancement has facilitated over-exploitation as ships can now fish in unexplored places.  These events indicate a strong need for effective international governance to tackle the threats.  


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