Development of foreign research on regional fisheries management organizations and its implications for China

Regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) are currently the main mechanism of international high seas fisheries management and one of the focal points of high seas fisheries management research. The development of distant-water fisheries in the West started earlier, and foreign researchers started theoretical and applied RFMO research earlier than those in China. Due to the long history of foreign research on RFMO, a more mature research system on RFMO theory and practice has been formed, with a wide range of research areas and relatively scientific research methods. This has produced a large number of far-reaching research results, which are of great significance for understanding the mechanism of RFMOs, the formulation and implementation of RFMO conservation and management measures, and the development trend of RFMOs. In this paper, bibliometric and knowledge mapping analyses are conducted to review foreign research on RFMO and present the research progress and focus. The results of quantitative analyses show that the number of foreign RFMO studies has been generally on the rise, research topics have covered natural and social sciences such as fishery, environment, and international relations. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have attached great importance to RFMO research. The results of keyword analysis show that the focus of foreign RFMO research includes fisheries management, the Southern Ocean, climate change, ecosystems, marine protected areas, and the law of the sea; the trend of foreign RFMO research has gradually shifted from biological research on biological resources to scientific management of high seas fisheries resources and ecosystem protection. On this basis, this paper conducts further qualitative analyses and finds that foreign RFMO researchers tend to explore the traditional RFMO research topics from a more innovative perspective, conduct the research in a more scientific method, making the research more dialectic, systematic, comparative, and continuous, and their research consciousness is so raised that they are always sensitive to new RFMO research topics. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of RFMO foreign studies, this paper summarizes their research development and tries to provide some inspiration for domestic scholars to effectively improve the depth and breadth of RFMO research.