Wild West of the High Seas

Did you know that pretty much anything goes in international waters? Past a certain point, national jurisdiction ends and the wild west begins. There’s no police force for the ocean, so with rampant piracy, smuggling and illegal fishing – who’s in charge? Maritime lawyer Richard Caddell joins Hannah Stitfall in the studio.

We’ll also meet Steve Truluck, whose life changed when he started watching whales off the coast of Scotland.

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Richard Caddell:
Imagine a map of the world laid out in front of you or a globe spinning. And you see the blue ocean’s out there in front of you. What you don’t see is a whole network of lines and boundaries that are invisible to the naked eye, but a huge part of international law. These are the maritime boundaries of each individual country. And where those end, usually at around about 200 nautical miles, everything that’s left over is the high seas. So let me just explain how far that is.

So we get in a boat. And we navigate out up to 200 nautical miles from our seashore. And at this point is that invisible boundary line where we cross into the high seas. When you hit this point, national laws no longer apply. The law that governs your boat is the law of your individual flag, and that will govern your conduct on the oceans. But beyond that, there’s not a huge amount of obvious international law that governs the high seas, sometimes referred to as the outlaw ocean, the so called Wild West of the oceans.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, a podcast series that brings the oceans and the incredible life within them right into your headphones. I’m Hannah Stitfall and I’m learning so much about the Big Blue. I’ve already had some incredible conversations in this series with the world’s most interesting ocean people. I’ve learned that whales have culture…

Voiceover 1:
They have different ways of doing things which they’ve learned from each other.

Hannah Stitfall:
That humans can hold their breath for a freakishly long time…

Voiceover 2:
My wife can hold the rest for seven minutes

Hannah Stitfall:
And that it only takes four days to become a submarine pilot.

Voiceover 3:
You know if you can figure out how to drive a car you could learn to drive a submersible.

Hannah Stitfall:
But I’m also starting to understand just how unbelievably vast the ocean is. It’s 71% of the Earth’s surface. That’s 140 million square miles.

Richard Caddell voiceover:
The oceans are an enormous expanse. It’s incredibly difficult to police. It’s incredibly expensive to police.

Hannah Stitfall:
Illegal fishing, smuggling pirates…

Richard Caddell voiceover:
That the likes of Blackbeard would once have kind of merrily plundered. Now you got the modern day examples with RPGs and assault rifles still merrily doing this.

Hannah Stitfall:
But there’s no oceans police force. So who’s in charge?

Richard Caddell voiceover:
This is not amateur night. These are people that are serious, organised criminals that know exactly what they’re doing in just the same way as any very, very effective organised crime group.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, Episode Six.

My guest today is the perfect person to talk to all about this. Richard Caddell is an expert in marine and environmental law. And he’s travelled all the way from Cardiff to be in the studio with me today. So welcome, Richard!

Richard Caddell:
Thanks very much for having me.

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you for coming all the way from Cardiff flusher very much appreciated. So you are an expert in all things, marine and environmental law. Yeah, cuz I mean, I’m not, I’m not too hot on these topics.

Richard Caddell:
Well, according to my bio, yeah, but well, yes, so I work mainly on maritime issues, particularly from an environmental standpoint. So things like fisheries, environmental conservation, bit of law enforcement, and elements such as that really, both in the oceans and little bit in the rivers and wetlands and anything really where there’s marine wildlife.

Hannah Stitfall:
Nice, easy job then, given, given the current state of the world.

Richard Caddell:
Just a bit, yes.

Hannah Stitfall:
Like to keep yourself busy.

So, Richard, I mean, how do we govern? What happens on the oceans? I mean, it really is, it’s the Wild West.

Richard Caddell:
It looks that way. There is an order to it. But it’s not one that is immediately apparent. So the way in which we regulate it is through a UN treaty called the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, sometimes called the Constitution for the Oceans, which lays down all the rights and responsibilities that the states have in relation to the oceans, what they can claim, what they’re not allowed to claim. And that lays down the limits of their jurisdiction and also their law enforcement powers and the rules as to what happens on those parts of the ocean that are beyond national jurisdiction, the high seas and the International Seabed area. So there’s an order to it.

Hannah Stitfall:
What exactly do we mean by the high seas, I mean, where are they? Who looks after them? What happens with them.

Richard Caddell:
So the high seas themselves are anything that isn’t claimed by a national state. So states are entitled to up to 200 nautical miles of territory. And they call that the exclusive economic zone. And where those zones end, the high seas begin. So anything that is not claimed by any country is technically the high seas, and that relates to the water column. And the seabed underneath that is called the International Seabed area. And that’s governed by an institution called the International Seabed Authority based in Jamaica. And that deals with things such as the mining rights and other elements like that on the natural resources of the of the seabed. But by and large, there’s no international organisation per se, that regulates the high seas. So what we have is a system called flag state exclusivity or flag state jurisdiction, where every country, every ship has to have a flag. And what country of the flag that is, is the laws that govern the ship in question. So the ships are governed themselves by little bits of national law. And that lays out what that ship can and can’t do. So if that country, for instance, let’s say the United Kingdom, signed up to labour conventions, signed up to environmental conventions, then that will guide the obligations on board that ship. And then what you then have is a series of countries that will, call it flagging out or flags of convenience, where they’ll essentially rent their flag, and perhaps they won’t have signed up to such good labour standards, or such environmental standards. And but they’re still acting perfectly legally. And within and around this there’s, there’s rules in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, that talk about ships having freedom of navigation in these waters and entitlements to fish, to lay pipelines, to do scientific research and, and other elements such as that.

Hannah Stitfall:
So what are some of the main crimes that happen out at sea, that we know of?

Richard Caddell:
That we know of. The big ones are obviously piracy, piracy and armed robbery, weapons smuggling, migrant smuggling and human trafficking, drugs, and yeah, essentially, the sort of major transnational crimes that we consider on land is often taking place at sea as well, and, and often a small part of a suite of criminal portfolio of, of some major international mafia and a major international crime organisations as well.

Hannah Stitfall:
And out of the crimes that do happen at sea, what would you say is the most lucrative? Tell us tell us some stories.

Richard Caddell:
Yeah, well, they’re all lucrative in their own way, unfortunately. And yeah, ultimately, you know, my students asked me, you know, what’s going to give me a good job and good prospects and things like that? Well, human trafficking is pretty lucrative. And the likelihood of you getting caught is – obviously tongue in cheek. But it’s but you know, the playing around with it conceals a wider problem. That’s the oceans are an enormous expanse, it’s incredibly difficult to police. It’s incredibly expensive to police. So countries tend to only kind of police one little patch at a time. Pursuing people is incredibly expensive as well. There was a very notorious case in Australia, where a vessel Viarsa 1 was, was caught illegally fishing for Patagonian toothfish. And the Australian Navy chased it down for about three weeks. And it cost them…

Hannah Stitfall:
Three weeks?!

Richard Caddell:
Three weeks at sea and it was, there was a much longer chase for a vessel called The Thunder later on that was conducted by Sea Shepherd. But what happened in the Viarsa case was they chased them around the oceans for about three weeks and cost them around about a million Australian dollars to eventually drag this vessel into land, the vessel was in pretty poor repair. So it’s not as if you could sell it and recoup that money. And of course, the people that are on board the vessel were fairly impoverished fishermen that ultimately had very little money to replenish that. And of course, it thrown all the evidence over the side. So they eventually were prosecuted for very minor crimes within a magistrate’s court. So these sorts of prosecutions often tend to be incredibly difficult and incredibly expensive.

Hannah Stitfall:
So talk to me about the human rights in the fishing industry. I mean, apparently, it’s really bad in tuna fishing.

Richard Caddell:
Yes, it’s unfortunately, a major problem in particular fisheries in particular locations. Of course, not all fishing vessels are running slave ships or anything like that. But there are a large number where where people are, are held in pretty much conditions of indentured labour, debt bondage, all of the sorts of things that you’d see in the human trafficking model taking place in any other kind of clandestine industry. And these vessels just stay out at sea for months, if not years at a time so you can’t escape anywhere. So there are stories of people being liberated essentially from from these vessels that have been on there for five, six years, by the time they’ve been caught and, and of course, these are vessels in very poor repair. So they’re dangerous, prone to leaking, sinking, all of those sorts of things and yes, unfortunately, this is a really significant problem that we’re only just getting to grips with on an international level.

Hannah Stitfall:
I was reading, it was an article, I think it was in 2020, it estimates that 100,000 people are killed each year out on the sea. So that equates to 300 people a day out at sea.

Richard Caddell:
It’s an astonishing statistic, isn’t it? It’s one of those things we’ll never know the truth of. We can only guess that the sorts of things that may be the tip of the iceberg, but it’s it’s certainly a significant problem where particularly stowaways often found on vessels, it’s quite easy to, or it’s a lot easier to rather than take them to a safe port and disembark them, which costs a shipping company or a vessel huge sums of money in terms of a detour, it’s a lot easier to just, there’s a couple of splashes overboard, and that was the end of it, unfortunately, and there’s examples of that happening. And of course, if you’re doing this in remote areas, or at night, it’s very, very hard to to ultimately…

Hannah Stitfall:
No one’s ever gonna know.

Richard Caddell:
Exactly, exactly. There’s a lot of problems at the moment with examples of fisheries observers, for instance, being murdered or harassed or assaulted. These are observers that as the name suggests, they are sent by government or sent by a fishing company to oversee what goes on on that vessel to make sure that what’s being caught is being recorded. And there’s been a growing amount of concern about the vulnerability of these people at sea. It’s once that vessel leaves the shore, you’re basically in a very confined space with a group of people who aren’t necessarily fond of your presence.

There’s just recently been a documentary film Death at Sea that was released in January of this year about a fisheries observer from Kiribati that died in mysterious circumstances and it really exposes a lot of the difficulties that that a lot of these people face; botched investigations, vessels then landing in parts of the world where corruption is rife, or there’s not particularly much in the way of investigative capacity. And also, you know, by the time you’ve arrived there, that the cabin has been scrubbed to a point where you could operate in it, and that that happened in in one such case as well, you know, the crime scene tech came on and said, Well, you know, this is.. I commend your cleaning, but this has completely eradicated all everything, anything untoward happening. So thank you very much. So it’s okay.

Hannah Stitfall:
Imagine 300 people killed every single day in London murdered…

Richard Caddell:
Exactly.

Hannah Stitfall:
It would be, there’d be riots. Why the police not doing anything? But it’s happening out on the open ocean every day.

Richard Caddell:
That’s always been the problem. It’s out of sight out of mind. Once that ship sailed over the horizon. There is a sense that they’re forgotten. And unfortunately, there has been a real problem.

Hannah Stitfall:
It’s horrendous! It’s actually horrendous and scary that it goes, I mean, it’s 2024.

Richard Caddell:
Absolutely.

Hannah Stitfall:
What is what is going on?

Richard Caddell:
But when you think about it, 2024… piracy is still rife, still rife in the Straits of Malacca, by Singapore, in the Gulf of Guinea, still off the coast of Somalia. Off the coast of Nigeria, there’s there’s many sort of choke points that the likes of Blackbeard would once have kind of merrily plundered. Now, you got the modern day examples with RPGs and assault rifles still merrily doing this.

Hannah Stitfall:
I think that it’s the human cost that really, really gets me and I’m an environmentalist-conservationists, you know, but when you think when you buy a new can of tuna on a supermarket shelf, you don’t think that somebody has been chained up on a boat for six years, and their friends have been murdered and you know, they’re basically a slave. That is something that needs to be broadcast and told to more people to make them understand. Because even if people don’t say feel affinity to a tuna fish, some people do some people don’t, you know, that’s fine. I don’t think there’s anybody in the world that would not think that slavery is, you know is horrendous.

Richard Caddell:
The really interesting thing about this is that we’ve got no shortage of eco labels, you know, no shortage of certification schemes to say this fish was caught pole-and-line, it was caught in this area, it was caught with good observation…

Hannah Stitfall:
But was it?

Richard Caddell:
Well, the likelihood is yes, I mean, in particular fisheries. But what we don’t have is a label that says this was caught ethically in terms of the human cost. We only look at well if I eating this fish, what has it done to the environment? Oh, that’s okay. There’s a nice glossy label on the tin that says it was caught sustainably. It was caught using good practices. But it doesn’t talk about, you know, what were the conditions of the fishes, when that was happening, and, and how we build that into consumer consciousness is, again, a really tricky issue.

Hannah Stitfall:
I mean, I think you see what they’ve done with the fashion industry over the last sort of, you know, 10 years when it when it comes to, you know, the factories and ethical workplaces and brands now, you know, clothing brands have to show that their factories are ethical, and their workers are paid fairly. Obviously, it doesn’t happen all the time, still, but there is real heightened awareness of that issue. And I think it should be exactly the same for fisheries.

Richard Caddell:
Absolutely. And you think this would be a really good selling point. From, from an economic standpoint, you’d think that actually this is something that, you know, we are tapping into something that clearly correlates on a human level. Concern that no ecosystem was unduly harmed in this process. But you know, the, the human cost behind it is never really sort of factored in.

Hannah Stitfall:
Let’s go make a documentary Richard!

Richard Caddell:
Absolutely!

Hannah Stitfall:
We’ll get out on the high seas. Bit of piracy, bit smuggling. We’ll let the people know. Yeah?

Richard Caddell:
Absolutely. Yeah. Trying to avoid being those 300, among those 300 that don’t make it back.

Hannah Stitfall:
That’s, that’s not on the ticket at all.

So these pirates yeah? What are they after? What are they nicking?

Richard Caddell:
That depends on what crossed their path really – often they’ll they’ll take an oil tanker, and ransom the oil tanker. And of course, the the ship owner wants that cargo. And the other problem is, does he want the seafarers? It’s an… they tend to get lost in this, the cargo is valuable bit, the people on board aren’t necessarily front and centre in these these kinds of negotiations. So they’ll hold a cargo for a set period of time until a ransom is paid for to be released. And there’s all sorts of rather lured stories of kind of Andy McNab types walking into the desert with, you know, a truck full of money and just depositing it and those sorts of things and deals being done in various back streets to to get tankers released and crews released. And yeah…

Hannah Stitfall:
This is just blowing my mind, to be honest.

Richard Caddell:
I mean, the reasons for piracy are different, I suppose to the, well in many respects, the same as they were in Blackbeard’s day. It’s pure, tt’s a nice, lucrative profession. So thank you very much. I’ll I’ll do this. But also, in many respects, that a lot of people don’t have an economic choice. If you go back to the days when when Somalia had failed as a state, and I wouldn’t suggest that it’s entirely recovered now, one of the main pirate groups, which is quite tragic comic was called the Somali Coast Guard, but they were the Coast Guard, they hadn’t been paid. So the only thing they could do was turn to piracy. So one of the main strands of dealing with this was to A) send warships in but B) also work on the ground to give people alternatives. So if people have got a career choice that doesn’t involve going out to sea and trying to stop an oil tanker in a skiff, then that’s one way to try to reduce the the incidence of of piracy in these areas.

Hannah Stitfall:
And who are the kingpins behind these operations? And can they can they ever be stopped?

Richard Caddell:
That’s a great question. The kingpins in many respects are the same kingpins that are doing you know things on land. So if you’re running a drugs operation on land, likelihood is you have a maritime branch to it as well. So it’s the same kind of Pablo Escobar types that just have this is one branch of their wider criminal portfolio. And there was a group of six vessels, they called the Bandits Six. Thankfully, most of them are now either at the bottom of the ocean, or rusting IN impoundment. But that was run by a conglomerate within northern Spain. Kind of everybody knew what they were doing, but proving it and tracing back the evidential links between what’s going on on board a vessel and who’s giving them those orders and which middleman is giving them those orders? And ultimately, who is this, is very, very difficult to to ultimately disentangle.

Hannah Stitfall:
This highly thought out organised crime?

Richard Caddell:
Oh, yes. Yeah, this is not Amateur Night. These are people that are serious organised criminals that know exactly what they’re doing. And they know exactly how to launder the proceeds in just the same way as any very, very effective organised crime group. And effectively, they are organised crime groups.

One really interesting thing about the laws of piracy that we have at the moment is, who they’re actually being used against and who they’re not being used against. So we’re actually finding a situation whereby a lot of environmental campaigners are falling foul of the piracy laws. And it’s been a couple of quite high profile examples in relatively recent years. We’ve had a situation whereby the law of piracy requires that, under the convention, it’s an act of violence or depredation permitted on the high seas or within the exclusive economic zone for private ends. And the question is, what is private ends?

When it was kind of written, and it’s largely copy pasted from the 19th and 18th centuries, that was essentially that it was theft private ends are you got something I want, I’m going to take it. But increasingly, we’re seeing a lot of piracy laws being used against environmental campaigners. Recently this has happened, or in the fairly recent past has been brought against Greenpeace and also more recently against Sea Shepherd in relation to their whaling campaign – or anti-whaling campaign I should say – in the Southern Ocean. And…

Hannah Stitfall:
What happened there?

Richard Caddell:
Yeah. So the Greenpeace case, what had happened was there was a protest against a company that was about to dump a load of toxic waste in the North Sea, and on the high seas, in the North Sea. And Greenpeace staged an intervention. And they boarded the vessel. And they sort of sprayed the windshield of the of the boat and painted some windows and boarded it and put some, some slogans on board the vessel. And they were arrested, brought back to the court in Belgium, and Belgium tried them for piracy. And they said, Well, this is an act of violence, and it’s for private ends. And I said, Well, what do you mean by private ends as well, you are advancing your objectives as an organisation. So that’s private ends.

So unfortunately, we’re actually seeing a lot of piracy laws being brought against environmental campaigners and it’s a strange quirk of modern piracy law that it seems to be catching people that you wouldn’t expect to be seen as being pirates.

Hannah Stitfall:
No. And is there is there nothing that can be can be done about that?

Richard Caddell:
Well, there’s a lot of criticism of those decisions. And there’s a lot of international lawyers out there that would say, well, this really isn’t what piracy law was intended to deal with. This is this is not kidnapping a vessel and holding an oil tanker to ransom as we…

Hannah Stitfall:
Or kidnapping people…

Richard Caddell:
Kidnapping people, or anything else of that nature. This is simply making a stand against something that’s governments are not putting a stop to. But unfortunately, on the technical letter of the law, certainly now in two courts in two separate countries, that has now been upheld to be sufficient for piracy, it wasn’t considered piracy in the Russian case, because they attacked an oil platform, or boarded an oil platform. And an oil platform, which is attached to the seabed is not technically a ship, and you can only commit piracy against ships. So on that technicality that wasn’t piracy. But it was certainly within the minds of the Russian prosecutors to run with that one as well. So possibly a tool of intimidation. But certainly something that I think piracy lawyers in the 1980s probably wouldn’t have anticipated seeing happening in subsequent years.

Hannah Stitfall:
That’s what I was next going to ask you, do you think we’re going to see more cases like this where we’re piracy laws and can be used against environmental campaigners?

Richard Caddell:
I think so, I think because the nature of environmental protesters has shifted a little bit, particularly at sea, where there’s a lot of at sea protests now. And this means that the countries are quite concerned about the impacts of this. This has ended up in international courts, fairly recently, over the last 10 years, particularly in relation to protests against oil. Where vessels in New Zealand, vessels in Brazil, North America, Europe have been sort of chased away by activists or kayactivists is one particularly memorable one where they got into kayaks and got in front of the drilling equipments and things like that. So they were all prosecuted for for sort of fairly low level offences. And then you got to get creative with maritime laws where people will abseil off bridges and stop a vessel coming out of harbour. And there’s certainly a sense that if people are putting themselves in physical danger, the law will be more in line with wanting to stop that. But where, equally importantly, we’ve also seen the International Maritime Organisation, the International Whaling Commission, and even international courts have come out and said, Well, people have free speech at sea. And that includes when you’re navigating, that includes the right to protest. So there is a sense of trying to strike that balance between protesting at sea and protest that perhaps engages a more dangerous course of activity and that’s the one I think, is the grey area of the law we might see. If not piracy laws brought against them, then certainly, health and safety laws being used in a way to try to curtail environmental protest.

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Hannah Stitfall:
So we’re gonna take a break from marine policy right now. So go grab a cuppa. And while you’re at it, hit the Follow button wherever you’re listening to this. And once you’ve done that, hop over to @oceanspod on Instagram, X/Twitter or TikTok, as our digital team have been whipping up some seriously cool bonus content for you, at @oceanspod. Help us spread the word.

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Hannah Stitfall:
Is there anybody like acting as like police on ships out the high sea now?

Richard Caddell:
Yes. So there will be naval vessels out in the high seas, which are able to assist vessels of that flag in distress. You’ve got your Coast Guard that will be out there doing anti-crime operations, drug running, all those sorts of things. And, of course, we have a lot of different treaties between countries whereby they can combine their law enforcement, something called a ship rider agreement, so that the oceans are policed more than perhaps they might initially seem. But of course, the sheer expanse of it means that it is quite literally a drop in the ocean. And they tend to be congregated in the major trouble spots, which means that, you know, there’s not a lot of eyes in particular parts of the ocean. And even if there were, there’s not a lot of ability to get to that, that crime scene, if you will, very, very rapidly.

Hannah Stitfall:
You’re very good at saying all of these things that are very PC way. I might phrase it quite differently. That’s why you do what you do. And I do what I do.

Richard Caddell:
Just run it through legal first.

Hannah Stitfall:
So what what about deep sea mining? What’s going on with that?

Richard Caddell:
That is a real political football. And that’s been a political football right from the off. So deep sea mining is what actually got us the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the first place.

Around about the 1960s, there were concerns about manganese nodules, which are these lumps of rocks on the bottom of the ocean that are about the size of a jacket potato or a small football, but they’re so packed full of wonderful minerals. And it was real concerns that only a very small number of countries had the submersible technology, they’ll be able to go down and scoop it up. And a lot of the developing states were concerned that by the time they had access to that kind of tech, then all the major industrialised countries would have come along and hoovered them all up. Yeah, yeah, it’s all gone again. So in 1967, the UN said, Right, let’s make the high seas the common heritage of humankind. And we’ll regulate this. And as they were doing it, they realised they couldn’t regulate the seabed without regulating everything. So eventually all got welded into one giant process that gave us this this huge treaty on the Law of the Sea. But more recently, that has been quite contentious because of the environmental risks of deep sea mining. And that’s been something that has exercised an awful lot of campaigners, but also governments as well.

Voiceover 1:
We want to highlight the risks of this upcoming destructive industry. Scientists have repeatedly warned that deep sea mining could have terrible consequences for ocean ecosystems, we barely know.

Voiceover 2:
We need to understand what the deep sea is, what is deep sea mining, what is the high seas, because these things are foreign concepts to us. And just we don’t understand it until you start doing the research necessary to inform yourself of the destructive practices that’s happening.

Richard Caddell:
There’s been real concern about the ecological damage that deep seabed mining will ultimately do to seabed ecosystems, many of which are incredibly fragile. But we’re starting to see really, interestingly, a lot more international bodies and a lot more governments coming out and saying there needs to be a global moratorium on this. But although the Law of the Sea Convention gives us the rights to do this, and in fact, a large part of the convention deals with the rights to do this. It’s perhaps not something we want to do. And there’s precedent for this, there is a mining arrangement for Antarctica, where, essentially, it’s been vetoed. So it’s starting to gain traction in a lot of different circles, beyond the usual suspects. So it’s quite heartening to see that governments are actually quite committed to digging up the seabed at the first opportunity are now starting to rethink that.

Hannah Stitfall:
So what would you say is your favourite or best policy success story? What’s happened on the oceans that has worked?

Richard Caddell:
Yeah, and I think what I don’t want to do is try to paint a picture that everything is catastrophic, and, and that we’re all doomed. And there are problems. Of course, there are problems, but there are a lot of success stories out there as well. And for me, I think one of the really interesting success stories about the ocean has been commercial whaling. Something I’ve been avidly interested in for the last 25 years.

We’ve gone from a situation where whaling was global, had imperilled pretty much the existence of whales. We’ve now, by virtue of regulation and a lot of people power nudging governments to end whaling, that we’ve reached to a situation whereby there’s very, very little whaling now, currently taking place and whale stocks are now starting to rebound, particularly in areas like Antarctica, the North Pacific, and certainly the Atlantic. Whale stocks have recovered, quite significantly, a great success stories a grey whale in North America, which in the 1920s, was hunted almost to the end of its existence. And in the last 10, 15 years, they have actually delisted it from the Endangered Species Act.

So there are examples of some really, really interesting foresight. But only last week, the UN put out a report on the state of migratory species and said that 97% of most fish stocks are in risk of extinction.

Hannah Stitfall:
97%?

Richard Caddell:
So there’s a huge amount of work left to be done.

Hannah Stitfall:
You’re gonna be busy the next few years

Richard Caddell:
Just a bit. Hopefully, a lot of us will be busy. Yourself included.

Hannah Stitfall:
So the global oceans treaty that passed last year, set the 30×30 target, so a global vision to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Currently, only about 3% are protected. So where does that vision fit into the question of ocean governance? And who is responsible for making that happen?

Richard Caddell:
Yeah, so this is this 30×30 targets a contentious one. It’s contentious in many ways, many quarters, it’s a double edged sword. Because if you don’t give people targets, they’re not going to do it. States will protect bits, because you know, they will have people pushing them to protect bits. But ultimately, if you don’t put quite sweeping targets down and quite significant targets down, there’s no real incentive for global ambition.

The other bit of it is, however, that’s problematic is, why 30%. You know, if we protect 30%, does that mean that everything will will be solved? What if it’s only 22%? And there becomes a bit of a danger that it becomes a nice catchy political slogan that isn’t either ecologically or politically meaningful. And there have been some concerns on that. There’s also the sense that if you give people quite big targets like this, they will game the system. And there’s been no shortage of examples of that.

Hannah Stitfall:
What do you mean?

Richard Caddell:
So countries will designate protected areas, but they’ll designate them in areas where nothing’s happening. Well, that’s protected. We made an MPA there, but there’s no industry there. Yeah, fine, it’s protected. But of course, would probably the most notorious example from a UK standpoint is that the UK simply drew a protected area around the Chagos Islands, which aren’t necessarily theirs to protect. So it’s like, yeah, we protected this bit.

Hannah Stitfall:
You couldn’t write it Richard.

Richard Caddell:
But the other the other problem you get with this is, what is a protected area. If you just draw lines around something, you’ve just got a pretty shape on a map. And ultimately, a good protected area, like anything is, has a management plan. It’s rigorously enforced, it’s studied, there is meaningful conservation work being done in this. But for a large amount of protected areas, especially at sea, we just simply draw coordinates on a map and say that’s a protected area. But there’s no oversight of it, or there’s very little oversight of it, because it’s expensive to do this. It’s expensive to police, these sorts of areas. There’s merit to having it protected. But often there is a preponderance of paper parks and designations that aren’t really marine protected areas by any kind of official yardstick.

Hannah Stitfall:
So who’s responsible for making that happen?

Richard Caddell:
In a nutshell, all of us. So countries will sign up to that, that treaty, and that will give them a series of obligations and commitments, and it’s down to them to enforce it on their own vessels out at sea, and to put in place those laws and practices. So in essence, when a country signs up to a treaty, it’s down to them to implement that treaty

Hannah Stitfall:
And who signed up to it so far?

Richard Caddell:
So Palau was the first and Chile signed up to it, or ratified it, just in the last couple of days. So we’ve got two so far, and hopefully counting.

Hannah Stitfall:
But we need how many, Sixty?

Richard Caddell:
We need 60, so we need another 58 to join them.

Hannah Stitfall:
And how likely is that?

Richard Caddell:
I think it’s very likely the sheer investment that went into the development of the treaty. It started off being mooted and just, at the turn of the century, we have our first major discussion shunts under the auspices of the UN from about 2004 onwards, we’ve had somewhere in the region of about five or six years of concerted negotiations at the UN, involving huge swathes of the globe. Everybody’s seriously invested in this treaty. So I would have thought that, hopefully, it’s a matter of signing up fairly quickly. And I think once clusters of countries start to do this, so the European Union, for instance, will will largely join as one. So that’s suddenly 28 plus the EU getting involved in things, you get a domino effect, in many respects, but they’re all many all sorts of reasons as to why this might be delayed slightly in certain countries. You know, we have an election this year in this country. So, of course, people signing up to different treaties, when there’s a possibility of a change of government or not, is one of those things that gets sort of pushed to one side, unfortunately. So there’s a lot of reasons why states will sign and then it’ll take a while for them to get it through the domestic parliament.

Hannah Stitfall:
But you’re optimistic about it?

Richard Caddell:
I am optimistic about it. Yeah.

Hannah Stitfall:
How did you get your job? How did you how did you start doing all this?

Richard Caddell:
I turned up in university and never left is the short answer. I just, I did a law degree and wasn’t particularly enthused by the prospect of wills and probate and you know, defending people who’d stolen a traffic cone and stuff like that, all that. I mean, yeah, there’s, there’s some, there’s some fun to be had in that but, and towards the end of my degree, I studied maritime law and just fell in love with it and just kind of kept going. That took me to a master’s degree in maritime law where I looked at the legal rights over the salvage of the Titanic, which had just come out at the time, and then took me to a PhD on whales, dolphins and porpoises and the craziness that that was at the time of the 90s and early 2000s, the International Whaling Commission.

Hannah Stitfall:
Really? That’s what you did your PhD?

Richard Caddell:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Stitfall:
My Goodness me. Well, listen, I’m really pleased that wills at traffic cones didn’t really get a vote because you do really important stuff. Thank you so much for coming on with me today. All the way from Cardiff. Thank you, Richard.

Richard Caddell:
Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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Hannah Stitfall:
That’s it for this episode. But get excited for next week, because Helen Scales is back and we’re chatting all things octopus. But before that, check this out:

Steve Trulock:
My name is Steve Trulock. I’m living in the northeast of Scotland and I’m a very keen whale enthusiasts. So right now I’m setting my caravan which is on the Murray Firth Coast overlooking a beautiful view of the sea looking north towards Sutherland and Caithness.

So I used to live in the Southeast of England, I was doing what I would say is a stereotypical job nine to five. Working as a consultant engineer, I lived in a place called Guilford. And I worked in a place called Chertsey. So I had the lovely commute around the M25 and the A3 every single morning, every single evening. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t very happy, like a lot of people, I had a lot of anxiety. I think I was on the brink of a real breakdown. And luckily for me, my work offered me the opportunity to move to Scotland and work on a project up in the northeast of Scotland. And pretty much no one else in the whole organisation wanted to come up here. So I took the opportunity. And I found myself living in this beautiful part of Northeast Scotland that I’d never been to. And above all else, there were dolphins! I found out on the first day of moving in, that there were dolphins that could be seen from my house that I’d moved into – I couldn’t believe it. And from that moment on, my life changed.

Oh yeah, the joy it gave me is and it’s just, it’s just carried on. I’m now into 12 years of living up here and nothing’s changed.

You want me to say that succinctly?

Watching whales and dolphins has just completely, totally and utterly changed my life. I have ended up working in some amazing places with some amazing people. And just having a connection with with the animals and the connection that seeing those animals brings with each other. During COVID you know we’re only allowed one walk a day and we had some basking sharks here. And the joy that just seeing those basking sharks brought to everyone who had been stuck in their houses day in, day out out just shows you how these animals can bring so much joy and bring communities together it’s amazing.

We need more of that, especially at the moment the way things are. It’s so important to have something positive to look forward to and enjoy together.

I’m Steve Trulock and I love connecting people to the animals in the ocean.

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This episode was brought to you by Greenpeace and Crowd Network. It’s hosted by me, wildlife filmmaker and broadcaster Hannah Stitfall. It is produced by Anastasia Auffenberg, and our executive producer Steve Jones. The music we use is from our partners BMG Production Music. Archive courtesy of Greenpeace. The team at crowd network is Catalina Nogueira, Archie Built Cliff, George Sampson and Robert Wallace. The team at Greenpeace is James Hansen, Flora Hevesi, Alex Yallop, Janae Mayer and Alice Lloyd Hunter. Thanks for listening and see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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