Special issue information:

Who ‘owns’ the fish—and the means to catch, process, trade, and profit from them—has become a critical question for the future of equitable and sustainable fisheries. Globally, ownership in the fisheries and seafood sector is opaque, increasingly financialized, and can be highly concentrated. These dynamics are reshaping access to marine resources, reconfiguring seafood value chains, and influencing policy outcomes both domestically and internationally—often with limited data disclosure and public accountability.

This Special Issue of Marine Policy will explore the political economy of capture fisheries, seafood processing, trade, and retail, with a focus on how ownership structures—including beneficial ownership—shape governance, equity, and transparency. It seeks to examine the power dynamics behind those who control access to marine resources and associated value chains, how this control is structured, and what implications these dynamics have for social, ecological, and economic outcomes, and the policy or regulatory interventions that could address these challenges.

This Special Issue invites original research and perspectives from a range of disciplinary, methodological, and geographic backgrounds. We particularly welcome work that examines ownership as a key analytical lens through which to understand the concentration of power and that advance debate and support real-world policy reform across the following themes:

• The role of beneficial ownership transparency in fisheries compliance and enforcement, and the impact of disclosure initiatives.

• Trends in corporate ownership concentration and vertical integration across seafood production systems.

• Patterns of ownership concentration in quotas, licenses, and owner-operator schemes.

• The use of front companies and domestication strategies to access foreign fishing grounds.

• Ownership and control dynamics across seafood value chains and implications for small-scale fisheries and fishing communities, especially in the context of access to rights, markets, and decision-making.

• Relationships between ownership structures and social, ecological, or economic outcomes, including coastal state development, labour standards and working conditions.

• Investment, hidden shareholder accountability, and the influence of financial capital on fisheries governance.

• Political economy frameworks—including neo-liberalization, financialization, and decolonial critique—that shape ownership rights, access, and control.

• Indigenous, customary, and community-based ownership models in fisheries governance.

详情链接：https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/323630/ownership-and-access-in-fisheries-production-processing-and-trade