A Summary of Issues Involving Marine Mammals and Highly Migratory Species

The conservation and protection of marine mammals is one of many serious problems relating to exploitation of the living resources of the ocean. While other problems, for example the management of fish stocks and the protection of anadromous, catadromous, and highly migratory species, receive a great deal of attention in the Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS Convention), negotiated by the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), the problem of marine mammals is addressed directly in only two provisions. Certainly, varying political and economic interests impede negotiation of a comprehensive international protective regime; however, the LOS Convention provisions are inadequate and may, in the end, only confuse the issue.