# Everyone in the Tent: How Ocean Treaties Actually Get Made

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-to-protect-the-ocean-2010/everyone-in-the-tent-how-ocean-treaties-actually-get-made
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-to-protect-the-ocean-2010/everyone-in-the-tent-how-ocean-treaties-actually-get-made.md
Podcast: [How To Protect The Ocean](https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-to-protect-the-ocean-2010)
Published: 2026-08-28T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.speakupforblue.com/podcast
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scicon/riverside_magic_episode_01_htpto_-_issf_2q_-_h.mp3?dest-id=228444
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/how-to-protect-the-ocean-2010/episodes/everyone-in-the-tent-how-ocean-treaties-actually-get-made
Duration seconds: 3893

## Resource

Holly Koehler has spent almost thirty years in rooms most people never think about: windowless UN offices in New York, the FAO in Rome, and what she calls "oftentimes very boring hotel ballrooms around the world," where countries hash out how the ocean actually gets managed. She's the Vice President of Policy and Outreach at the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), and before that she spent thirteen years at the U.S. State Department's Office of Marine Conservation, chairing international fisheries negotiations. In this episode, she walks Andrew through how a grad-school internship on sea turtles turned into a career built entirely around one question: how do you manage a species that ignores every border humans have drawn? Andrew and Holly cover what a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) actually is and why nearly the entire ocean is already covered by one, why she says listening, not legal expertise, is the most important skill she's ever used at the negotiating table, and the story behind an all-night Thanksgiving session that produced a landmark UN resolution protecting deep-sea corals and seamounts from bottom trawling. Holly also explains why ISSF treats governance as being just as important as fishing practices, drawing a direct line from her anthropology background to her belief that governance is what civilization itself is built on, and breaks down exactly how ISSF's audits and public compliance data connect to the eco-labels shoppers see on a can of tuna. This is the episode the whole week has been building toward. If you've been following along with Monday through Thursday's solo episodes, you've already heard the RFMO explainer, the bottom-trawling story, and the High Seas Treaty history. Here, Holly connects all of it, in…

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## Transcript

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