The seafood cold war felt real for the first time outside of a briefing room. It was next to a row of buzzing refrigerated containers on a windy pier; the steel itself seemed to be alive as it perspired a little in the sea air. A deckhand yelled something I couldn’t quite understand a forklift beeped and everything smelled like old fish diesel and saline. This is the aspect of globalization that is left out of glitzy trade talks. Dinner is piled in white boxes and ready to be transported like any other commodity. It’s noisy chilly and oddly intimate.
The ocean was viewed for many years as an open pantry with an ambiguous lock on the entrance. In theory the limits drawn by UNCLOS 200 miles of EEZ and 12 miles of territorial sea made everyone more civilized. In actuality it produced a fresh competitive map. Nations protect fishing rights like oil fields inside that 200 miles. Modern sonar larger engines and financial pressure that doesn’t stop for spawning cycles all contribute to the ancient tragedy of the commons rationale that persists outside of them on the high seas.
| Item | Important information |
|---|---|
| Governance backbone | United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) |
| Adopted / in force | Adopted 1982; entered into force 1994 |
| Who’s in | 166 countries + the European Union (the U.S. has signed but not ratified) |
| What it sets | Territorial sea (12 nautical miles), Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) (200 nautical miles), rules for navigation and seabed resources |
| Why it matters for seafood | Determines who can fish where, how disputes are argued, and how weak enforcement gets exploited |
| Key enforcement gap | Rules exist, but surveillance and penalties often don’t travel as well as the fish do |
Slogans make it easy to convey the global narrative. There’s a reason why Sir Walter Raleigh’s adage whoever commands the sea commands the trade is still in use today. Approximately 90% of international trade travels by ship. It travels with seafood which is frequently prepared in one nation packaged in another and consumed in a third by someone who believes that product of means what it says. It’s becoming more difficult to defend that premise. The competition now includes the supply chain: who controls the ports who controls the fleets who controls the processing facilities and who has the inspection system that may stifle rivals or turn them away.
Fish are perceived as being strategic politically sensitive and susceptible to disruption just like rare earths were originally handled by governments and investors. Although hunger is the moral center of it it is not the sole issue. Leverage is the key. In an emergency a nation with the ability to import protein from the sea or sell it overseas has options. When a nation is unable to pay tribute in the form of access rather than gold it becomes dependant in ways that are painfully medieval.
The obvious lightning rod is China’s distant water fishing fleet which is sometimes referred to as the largest in the world. This is due in part to its visibility in satellite images and in part to the fact that it activates everyone’s old naval instincts. But it’s a messier reality. Interests from Europe Russia America Japan Korea and increasingly India are in the sea pursuing migratory animals that are unaware of national pride.
Fishing boats are used as bait or proxy in bigger sovereignty games in contested areas the most well known of which is the South China Sea. It’s still unclear if every event is motivated by a culture of impunity or if it is strategically planned. In any case the smaller coastal states that are witnessing the thinning of their nearshore stocks suffer the same outcome.
Enforcement acts as a luxury good even when there are regulations. Patrol boats airplanes satellites prosecutors and courts all require money to monitor a large area of the ocean. A lot of nations either lack a budget or have one along with other goals. The market fills that void and not in a good way. Operators can move across jurisdictions more easily thanks to flags of convenience.
Documents are manipulated. Catch is laundered via ports with infrequent inspections. Despite its naval might the United States only inspects a small percentage of containers that pass through its system. It’s difficult to avoid wondering how any nation actually understands what it’s importing including fish when you watch containers move past in unending columns.
Unaffected by human compromise the ocean itself is also altering the parameters of the conflict. Fish are forced into new ranges by warmer more acidic water making the local mainstay of the past a diplomatic issue of the present. A cod moving north is more than just a biological phenomenon; it can also result in a change in income employment and occasionally cultural shock. Another layer of temptation is created by the melting Arctic. There are new shorter shipping lanes. There may be new fishing grounds. It may seem like an opportunity but keep in mind how little authority exists at the top of the world and how easily the frontier turns into a free for all if revenues start to show.
Any triumphalist discussion about a blue economy would seem premature given the dire environmental indications. The fact that plastic outnumbers plankton in some areas of the Pacific Gyre is a horrifying statistic not a metaphor. The high seas continue to be the area where good intentions go to die quietly and many fish species are either close or completely depleted. Although bottom trawlers destroying the seafloor don’t resemble warships the ecological harm they cause can be just as strategic. Sovereignty boundaries won’t save you if habitat crumbles.
Strangely the United States is powerless in the center of this narrative. Despite having an unparalleled naval capability to patrol international sea lanes it does not adhere to UNCLOS the convention that forms the basis of the majority of the maritime legal system.
This paradox has repercussions. Allies still work together but when you want people to abide by norms you haven’t officially joined credibility counts. In the meantime since the 1970s domestic fishery management has significantly improved partly due to Cold War era anger at Soviet industrial ships off American coasts. The irony is that while the market happily sources from the weakest link American conservation success domestically does not always translate outside.
This isn’t just a race for wealth; it’s a cold war since power is concealed within everyday logistics. Power is a freezer’s capacity. Access to ports is power. Data on vessel tracking is power. This also applies to the authority to impose sustainability norms that depending on who drafts them may be conveniently protectionist or based on moral principles. In the past empire was set against the water. It is now the mechanism.
Spend some time close to the functioning water if it seems suspicious. Observe how frequently politicians discuss sovereign rights alongside food security how frequently shipping executives discuss chokepoints as if they were personal concerns and how frequently fisherman discuss their grounds as a threatened home.
It’s possible that a crisis headline won’t mark the beginning of the next great period of maritime rivalry. A refused port call a new licensing regulation an abrupt tariff supported by traceability or a fish that just ceases to appear where it once did are some of the more subdued signals it will arrive in. The sea doesn’t pick sides. However countries do and they are discovering once more how dominance at sea may influence the future on land.
i) https://www.variety.com/lists/new-power-new-york-list-2023/
ii) https://www.cfr.org/reports/global-oceans-regime
iii) https://www.jean-georges.com/restaurants/united-states/new-york/abc-kitchens-dumbo
iv) https://www.newyorker.com/tag/fine-dining