The international community is no longer short on high-level agreements to protect the open ocean. Chief and most recent among them is the United Nations’ Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement — also known as the High Seas Treaty — which legally entered into force in January 2026.
While the treaty reached the 60-ratification threshold in late 2025, a steady drumbeat of administrative follow-through and further NGO efforts this year has since pushed that total to 93 ratifications to date — backed by mid-2026 additions like the United Kingdom signing on in July and Serbia joining in August.
But global policies are only as powerful as the political will to enforce them on the water. It’s something the world’s nations and parties to the BBNJ can and must do together.
Policy enforcement gaps are playing out across the globe as we speak. Consider the giant squid fisheries of the South Pacific.
Working through the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), South American coastal nations have pushed for strengthened regional oversight, capping fleet sizes, improving port controls, and mandating electronic monitoring systems.
Yet, massive industrial distant-water fleets (DWFs) still operate aggressively right along the outer boundaries of these countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), using the invisible seam between RFMO-managed high seas and nationally-controlled waters as a tactical shield.
A similar pattern is visible at Walvis Ridge, in the South Atlantic — a single connected seamount chain running from Namibia's African coast to Tristan da Cunha, a UK overseas territory. On the southwest end of the ridge, Tristan benefits from a nearly 700,000 km² no-take zone backed by the UK's Blue Belt Programme, with dedicated patrol and monitoring resources supported by OceanMind. Far to the northeast, near its border with Angola, Namibia has pushed for protection on its own stretch — and for the connecting high-seas section.
The result: protection efforts at both ends, and an under-regulated stretch in the vast waters in between, where preliminary analysis suggests that fishing and transshipment on the ridge is sending catch toward East Asian markets.
These are the kinds of gaps that make treaties like BBNJ only a first step. They’re also where regional collaboration to boost enforcement capacity will be crucial.
Encouragingly, there’s collective momentum to close these gaps. One recent example: at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, 16 countries spanning Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Pacific adopted the Mombasa Declaration on Fisheries Transparency, committing to publish vessel registries, share satellite tracking data, and expose true corporate ownership. Measures like these would make it possible to see DWFs working the edge of an EEZ, or catch moving off an unregulated stretch of seafloor.
Mombasa exemplifies a growing appetite to coordinate on implementation strategy. But collaborating on tools isn't the same as collaborating on enforcement — and that's the harder problem still ahead.
To safeguard our global seas, governments and regional fisheries management organizations need a shared standard, intelligence base, and coordination mechanism to monitor, verify, and act on together, from the port to the high seas.
United across a common, accessible platform, governments, regional organizations, philanthropic partners, development institutions, and technical agencies alike can harness the following capabilities:
This is exactly what we’re unveiling in early September: an OceanMind-led global initiative known as Syndra. It is a new regional mechanism designed to help governments turn shared marine governance commitments into practical, coordinated action. Syndra brings together trusted data, technical assistance, and structured collaboration so agencies can strengthen fisheries enforcement, improve maritime domain awareness, and work more effectively across borders.
For Southeast Asia — the first regional focus of the global effort — Syndra offers a focused pathway to regional cooperation that supports national priorities while addressing challenges no single country can solve alone, from illegal fishing and port-state controls to implementation of wider ocean commitments. For funders and partners, it provides a practical framework for investing in government-led capacity development, shared intelligence, and measurable improvements in ocean governance.
We’ll officially unveil Syndra during an invitation-only side event at SAFET’s conference in the Philippines. OceanMind will lead the session with participation from national agency partners. Please email annie@oceanmind.global to request an invite. Or contact info@oceanmind.global to learn more.
