Historical Documents Related to Joint Governance of the Great Lakes Fishery, including an Annotated Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, Its Enabling Legislation, and Failed Precursors
Authors
Marc Gaden, Cory O. Brant, Robert Lambe, Greg McClinchey, Jill Wingfield, and Chris Grubb
Citation
Gaden, M., Brant, C. O., Lambe, R., McClinchey, G., Wingfield, J., and Grubb, C. 2022. Historical documents related to joint governance of the Great Lakes fishery, including an annotated Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, its enabling legislation, and failed precursors. Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Laurentian 2026-01. DOI: https://doi.org/10.70227/OKEZ8055
Abstract
Cooperative governance of the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes fishery was first proposed in 1897 after the Joint Commission Relative to the Preservation of the Fisheries in Waters Contiguous to Canada and the United States observed that inadequate science, lack of regulations, and jurisdictional chaos had contributed to severe fishery losses. An agreement to bring cohesion to fishery governance was first proposed in 1908. Another agreement, in 1946, attempted to do the same. Both treaties failed largely because they created a joint commission that would have stripped the state and provincial jurisdictions of their fishery-management authority and because of limited appetite to regulate. A third attempt at an agreement in 1954, the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries between the United States of America and Canada, succeeded because it denied the joint commission—now called the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC)—regulatory authority. Instead, the GLFC was vested with the responsibility to advance Great Lakes science, help jurisdictions work together, and control the noxious Sea Lamprey Petromyzon marinus. This publication, a companion to Gaden et al. (2022), includes a brief description of the origins of each of the three agreements; provides an annotated version of the successful Convention of 1954, including intent and implementation; and contains facsimiles of the actual agreements and related documents.
About Laurentian
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Launched in 2022, Laurentian replaces three historically separate, irregularly published Commission journals: Technical Report, Special Publication, and Miscellaneous Publication. Laurentian will continue to serve as an outlet for publication of interdisciplinary review and synthesis papers; narrowly focused material with special relevance to a single but important aspect of the Commission’s mandate under the Convention; and scientific reports from committees that work under the umbrella of the Commission. In addition, relevant papers that do not fit the format of mainstream journals owing, for instance, to length, extensive datasets, or nature of the material and its presentation, will be considered. For further clarification, authors are encouraged to review recent papers published under the three former titles, all available on the Commission’s website (www.glfc.org).
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