U.S. fishery negotiations with Canada and Mexico

Abstract

In the last decade, the world has witnessed a fundamental reorientation of posture toward marine resources as evidenced by consensus in the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) and the near universal move toward fishery jurisdictions of 200 nautical miles (370 km). These and other non‐marine‐specific economic and political pressures impose a new constellation of constraints on North American fishery relations. This has resulted in disharmonies on two borders.

This paper, then, addresses the form of binational fishery negotiations between the United States and her two neighbors. One section presents a general model of the binational negotiation process. The next section introduces the institutional and political context of U.S.‐Canada relations, and then applies the negotiation model to the evolution of West Coast salmon deliberations. In a parallel fashion, the following section focuses on U.S.‐Mexico relations and the tuna, shrimp, and anchovy fisheries. The last section concludes with remarks on future directions for North American binational fishery relations.