Enforcement and Compliance in Fisheries

Dear Colleagues,

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing has plagued the world’s fisheries for decades. At the same time, the international legal framework for regulating fisheries has significantly developed, including for areas beyond national jurisdiction. Just as importantly, our understanding of compliance in fisheries has become more refined. The central question is why fishers choose to comply with or violate the rules.

Traditionally, compliance has been viewed through the lens of economic rationality: fishers follow the rules when it is in their financial interest to do so and break them when it is not—with the role of public authorities being to provide effective deterrence. In recent decades, this economics-based approach has been challenged by scholars in sociology, anthropology, criminology, and other social sciences. Empirical studies show that fishers may obey the law even when doing so is not economically advantageous—for example, when deterrence is weak. Compliance is increasingly seen as shaped by personal morality, social norms, and perceptions of legitimacy within the management system. More dynamic models, including situational factors, have emerged in recent years.

This Special Issue seeks to complement the existing literature with fresh contributions to theory-building and new empirical research on compliance and enforcement practices worldwide, including the fight against IUU fishing. We welcome submissions from international law, economics, and the social sciences.

Prof. Dr. Geir Hønneland
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fishes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• compliance
• enforcement
• IUU fishing
• fisheries management
• law of the sea
• ocean governance
• blue crime