After years of international negotiation and diplomacy, in January 2026 the High Seas Treaty has come into effect. It has been ratified by 61 states around the world and is intended to protect international waters and marine life.
But the authors of a new book argue that the ocean cannot be saved by legislation alone.
Paul Watson is one of the authors along with academic Sarah Levy. Watson was an early member of Greenpeace, and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, but is no longer linked to either organisation. While he maintains he has never caused physical injury to anyone, he promotes “aggressive non-violent” direct action, and is currently wanted by the Japanese state.
Levy is a researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, and a member of the Bar of Ontario.
While some disagree with the opinions of Watson and Levy, the arguments of The Only Flag Worth Flying nonetheless ask whether enough is being done to protect the ocean and the life which depends upon it.
Scientists agree that the ocean is warming quickly, causing extreme weather events and that marine life is struggling with acidification, pollution and plastics, and industrial activity like deep-sea mining.
In the face of these challenges, Levy and Watson believe that direct action is needed because international laws are not otherwise enforced. Examples of direct action include interfering with whaling operations, cutting fishing nets or boarding boats and oil rigs.
The problem, the authors say, is that despite the proliferation of treaties, such as the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), enforcement authority remains heavily dependent on state will and capacity.
Levy explains: “While international environmental law has expanded significantly over recent decades, its effectiveness remains constrained by structural features of the system itself. International treaties generally rely on state consent and domestic implementation, and there is no centralised global enforcement authority to ensure compliance on the high seas.”
As no global enforcement exists, Watson and Levy say: “Direct action is not merely a tactic of resistance, but a necessary, and increasingly indispensable, form of conservation enforcement in a world where states often refuse or fail to act.”
In the book, the authors argue that their movement: “Has embodied a form of principled resistance – acting not in defiance of law, but in defiance of its abandonment. In this sense, its actions uphold the principle that when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty, for when enforcement is forsaken, intervention becomes necessity.”
Writing specifically about the High Seas Treaty, which comes into effect on 17 January 2026, the authors say: “What use is a high seas treaty to protect marine eco-systems? Without enforcement, it is simply a piece of paper. To this very day, the high seas remain a lawless place where economic anarchy reigns and the greedy thrive”.
Their justification is that “if the high seas belong to no one and everyone, and in this sense, are a global commons, then it follows that the duty to protect them may also be diffused.”