Property rights, or the exclusive ability of someone to own, use, exchange, and/or gift property, have become one of the fundamental legal pillars of the modern world, yet they are mysteriously absent from the realm of oceans. No one truly owns, or is even allowed to purchase, property in the ocean. As a result, nobody has any incentive to preserve or cultivate the waters themselves.

What has ensued can only be described as a textbook case of the tragedy of the commons. The oceans, in short, have become a giant dumping ground. Not only has a lack of property rights led to the systematic defiling of the ocean, this arrangement has also prevented people from cultivating the ocean’s vast untapped potential. Since no one is allowed to protect or cultivate the ocean through owning property, ocean industry has been extremely limited, only consisting of extracting resources rather than multiplying them through activities like aquaculture. Even if anyone could choose to engage in aquaculture, they run the risk of being immediately deprived of their crop since there would be no way to prevent rival fishermen from taking the fish. Given this dilemma, it’s likely we’ve only tapped into a fraction of the immense value from the fish and mineral resources in the sea.

[By design. It’s an interesting concept, but private property has to have some rational sovereign to defend and confirm it. That could work in territorial waters, but translating that to the vast majority of the oceans and seas seems unworkable. And even if it could be done, the point of the ambiguity is to stop the tapping of resources, as environmentalists manage to do now without regard to the status of private property, on land or otherwise. — Ed]