Area-based Management and Regional Fisheries Management Organisations in the Asia Pacific Region

The concept of area-based management in recent times has become increasingly associated with fisheries management. That this should be so is not a surprise. The linking of international regulation to the regulation of specific areas is not at all new - in fact if anything the reverse is true.1 Historically, linking the regulation of marine living resource to specific areas goes back to the earliest efforts at such regulation. Regional fisheries management organizations (rfmos) have typically, but not always, been geographically limited in area, and therefore it is logical that as area-based management has been considered in other contexts in dealing with ocean space that it should also be considered in the context of fisheries.