Who Owns the Sea? As the world’s seas become the last–grossly overfished–frontier, who is the sheriff?

“All this begs the question, who owns the sea? You might think that in a modern democracy we, the citizens, should be the owners. But European and national law, such as it is, really protects only the rights of a number of vested interests, such as those of fishermen. Yet few fishermen prosper, for the law as it is keeps them effectively in a state of anarchy, a race for the last fish, in which only the most rapacious and most technologically-advanced survive.”