United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement

The United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA), otherwise known as the Straddling Fish Stocks Agreement (formally, the Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks) is a multilateral treaty created by the United Nations to enhance the cooperative management of fisheries resources that span wide areas, and are of economic and environmental concern to a number of nations. As of December 2016, the treaty had been ratified by 91 parties, which includes 90 states and the European Union.

Straddling stock are fish stocks that migrate through, or occur in, more than one exclusive economic zone. The Agreement was adopted in 1995, and came into force in 2001.

Highly migratory fish is a term which has its origins in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It refers to fish species which undertake ocean migrations and also have wide geographic distributions, and usually denotes tuna and tuna-like species, shark, marlin and swordfish. Straddling fish stocks are especially vulnerable to overexploitation because of ineffective management regimes and noncompliance by fishing interests.