Right to Fish? - Fisheries Management and the Arctic High Seas

Last year, 10 nations signed an historic agreement to ban unregulated commercial fishing in the high seas of the Arctic Ocean until the changing environmental conditions of the Arctic are better understood. Following this ban, nations may decide to implement fisheries management practices in the region. The purpose of my research is to theorize what future fisheries management in this region may look like. My study examines the foreign and Arctic policies of the 10 signatory nations to benchmark future management of this region and the national and international motivations of the signatory nations. The presentation will be followed by a brief discussion about the preliminary results.

Lauren Fields is a 2019 Fulbright Arctic Scholar at the University of Akureyri funded by the Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She received her PhD in 2015 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Antarctic fish physiology and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College in Biological Science and Medieval Studies. In the United States, she works for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service as a Foreign Affairs Specialist in the office of International Affairs and Seafood Inspection.