We've heard similar arguments in post-soviet countries regarding farming land - private land owners will take better care of the land, will protect the wildlife, won't poison their own land, etc.

Privatization didn't help ... small owners rent their land to the big ag, wildlife is still being decimated, land degradation accelerated, and now there are new deserts in central Europe (last week there was a sand storm in Hungary and Slovakia).

Just look at the state of forests in those countries... Parts of unique national parks razed to the ground... Land owners just want to get rich ASAP everywhere.

I mean, the USSR’s state-run actions completely drained and destroyed one of the largest inland seas in the world. Public isn’t always the answer either.

What really works for ocean policy is putting informed experts in charge of global regulations and everyone adhering to the rules under strict observation and penalties. It’s just really hard to get those institutions setup.

There’s an opportunity to use the existing UNCLOS framework to establish rules around commercial fishing operations, but they’ve been stalled for years. Likely because China is the worst offender and currently disputes a lot of the rules around sea/ocean territory given their interests in their immediate maritime spaces.

> wildlife is still being decimated

Wildlife isn't owned by anybody. Contrast this with cows. Cows are in no danger of extinction, despite mass slaughter of them.

I will happily cover my land in radioactive sludge today [1], in exchange for a one-time payoff that exceeds what I paid for it (Or, worse yet, what I can expect to recoup from it in <whatever finite time horizon I care about>).

Also, it's not like fish are going to respect lot borders. Overfishing in the lot next to mine will damage my lot's value. The only correct way for me to respond is by overfishing my lot.

[1] And leave my neighbours to deal with the long-term fallout.

The empirical experience is that landowners take good long term care of their land. That is how it keeps its value.

You may be disappointed to learn that lucrative radioactive sludge cover opportunities are quite hard to find in today's market.

You're right the fishing right zones need to account for fish migration paths etc.

Where are you from? I'd like to move if people around you take care of their land. Here in Michigan people don't often do that.

My private well is contaminated with 85 ppt (and my bloodstream, at 30ppt years after fixing the water supply) of PFAS because Wolverine tannery owners decided to dump ScotchGuard contaminated scraps in the swamp behind their homes.

The river through that same town, likewise, is no longer a world-class trout stream because homeowners on the stream banks fill it with nitrates and algae blooms by fertilizing their lawns. Lakes are clogged with zebra mussels because fishermen won't clean their boats and drain livewells/bilges while traveling between lakes, and the very fish they're going around to catch are down precipitously as a result of those actions. Once-productive farms? Soil's depleted. Old growth forests? Clear-cut, replaced by scrubby tangles and immature pines. The whole Great Lakes ecosystems? I give it less than a decade before invasive carp come through Chicago's unreliable electric deterrent.

The lack of radioactive sludge opportunities is unique, most other land-destroying activities are well established.

Land keeps its value because it's scarce and the growing population and growing economy keeps needing it, not because it's maintained to anything remotely like the ecological quality it once had.