Finance

Environmental resource management

Business

Public international law

Frontier

Corporate governance

Biology

Algorithm

Political science

Habitat

International waters

Geography

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Ecology

Jurisdiction

Convention

Computer science

Law of the sea

International law

Cartography

Marine protected area

Geospatial analysis

Environmental science

State (computer science)

International Social Science Journal

Marine protected areas (MPAs), a common marine conservation tool, function as both objects of governance and as a form of territory. This article tracks the long‐term effort to produce conservation territories on the high seas, in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Drawing on data collected at five international environmental meetings, the paper demonstrates how an imaginative geography of the high seas is being simultaneously constituted by scientific and technological advances, particularly geospatial visualisations, as well as coordinated efforts to advocate for and develop a new international conservation instrument (an implementing agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). Conventional understandings of territory constrain this effort by equating territory with the state. At the same time, the case of high seas conservation contributes to critiques of this conceptualisation of territory, by showcasing the role of multiple actors in seeing and controlling ocean space. Overall, the production of territory on the high seas both reflects and informs a shift in the “frontier mentality” of the oceans, as conservation and science frontier as well as economic frontier. Diverse responses to representations of, and policies for, the high seas point to both possibilities and limits of territorial thinking in the oceans.

Charted waters? Tracking the production of conservation territories on the high seas