REUTER - 14/3/1995

By Anthony Goodman

UNITED NATIONS A U.N. conference with an impossible sounding name has been grappling for the past two years with just the kind of problem that has led to a "fish war" between Canada and Spain.

Called the Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, it is trying to draft rules for the management of species found both inside a country's 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, where coastal states exercise control, and on the high seas beyond, where there is little or no effective control.

The conference's first substantive session was held in July 1993 and the fourth last August. A fifth session is scheduled to open on March 27 and another in late July, in hopes of being able to complete work this year.

The conference is trying to head off disputes of the kind which led to the seizure by a Canadian patrol boat last week of a Spanish trawler fishing for Greenland halibut, or turbot, in international waters.

With the European Union taking Spain's side, a Spanish fishing boat captain said 14 trawlers had resumed fishing in the same waters, despite fears of another run in with Canada.

The U. N. Law of the Sea Convention which was completed in 1982 and went into force only last November provides for a 12 nautical mile territorial sea limit and a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

But while the convention's 320 articles deal with virtually all uses of the world's seas and oceans, additional rules are required to solve the linked problems of severe overfishing and drastic depletion of fish stocks.

A key issue is how to reconcile the interests of coastal states and countries whose fleets operate on the high seas, when it comes to species of fish which spend part of their life cycle in both environments.

Conservationists say the world's fish catch increased more than four fold over 40 years, from some 20 million tons annually in 1950 to a peak of about 86 million tons by 1989.

Meanwhile, the capacity of the world's fishing fleets is greater than the amount of fish that can be caught on a sustainable basis.

Among depleted stocks are pollock in a part of the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk; hake, southern blue whiting and squid off Argentina's Patagonian Shelf; jack mackerel off the coast of Chile and Peru; redfish in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway; and cod in the northwest Atlantic.

Canada plays a particularly active role at the Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks, having stopped fishing that threatened cod and flounder stocks in the northwest Atlantic in 1992.

Canada's Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Brian Tobin, told last August's session of the conference that his country's commitment to conservation had cost tens of thousands of jobs.

"We are willing to make that commitment to protect and rebuild resources. But we will not make this sacrifice in vain...We will not accept that resources we are conserving today inside 200 miles will be plundered in future outside 200 miles."

He said an effective international regime, in a legally binding convention, must overcome differences on three issues: compatibility of conservation measures inside and outside the 200 mile economic zone, dispute settlement machinery and enforcement.

A senior European Union ((EU) official concerned with fisheries, Almeida Serra, told the conference that the EU not only had an important fishing fleet operating on the high seas but also had a very substantial coastal area.

He said there was no alternative to cooperation between all states concerned, but added it was "inconceivable...that if there is no agreement, one of the parties should take the lead by adopting unilateral measures which could be invoked against other states."