. .
17.45��management of high seas fisheries, including the adoption, monitoring and enforcement of effective conservation measures, is inadequate in many areas and some resources are over utilised.�
17.45 ��action and co-operation should address inadequacies in fishing practices, as well as in biological knowledge, fisheries statistics and improvement of systems for handling data.�
. . .
17.44 �Over the last decade, fisheries on the high seas have considerably expanded and currently represent approximately 5% of total world landings.�
Agenda 21, Chapter 17, Section C
Sustainable Use and Conservation of Marine Living Resources of the High Seas
The issues and concerns regarding the utilisation of living resources harvested from beyond coastal waters are now considered. The main priority of this section is to encourage the sustainable and well-managed use of living resources on the high seas in order to ensure that the current problems facing coastal fisheries are not mirrored.
Decreases in populations and overcapitalisation of important marine species due to unregulated fishing.
Around the time that Agenda 21 was produced, the FAO reported that more than two thirds of the worlds marine fish stocks were being fished at or beyond their maximum sustainable level. Of these stocks, 25% were already depleted and in danger of collapse due to over harvesting.
Over fishing due to increased fishing effort and excessive fleet size.In the UK alone there are 7600 fishing vessels, with a further 635 registered in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
Non-compliance with conservation and management policies through vessel reflagging.
Capture of non-target species and subsequent discard due to insufficiently selective gear.
Poor management due to unreliable and insufficient databases.
A lack of knowledge about a New Zealand Orange Roughy fish stock led to the establishment of an excessively high quota allowance. This caused the overexploitation of the stock and its subsequent decline (Morgan, 1997).
Poor implementation of policy due to lack of co-operation between states.
Coastal waters alone are unable to meet the increasing demand for marine resources. Landings by weight of the primary high seas species groups 
have risen by between 10-44%, whilst total world landings by weight have only risen 1.4% over the same time period (1992�1998).
Technological advances have enabled the economic exploitation of demersal and pelagic high seas species. The technical capacity of world fleets has increased four fold between 1965 and 1995 (WWF/IUCN, 1998). Some fisheries now utilise spotter planes and satellites to locate prey and schools of fish.
Many coastal fish stocks are now depleted and may no longer represent an economically viable return on fishing effort. Productivity has fallen by as much as 30% in some areas, with stocks such as the bluefin tuna and swordfish now considered �commercially extinct� in certain regions (WWF/IUCN, 1998).
Fishing enterprise directly and indirectly employs some 200 million people world-wide, and so the collapse of a fishery always incurs massive job losses. For example, over exploitation led to the closure of a Canadian cod fishery in 1992, resulting in the loss of 40,000 jobs.