open ship registries and flags of convenience for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing have been effective in pressuring states to reform or limit their open ship registries to fishing vessels, or at least in severely curtailing registrations under that jurisdiction. These sanctions generally limit or ban access to the European Common Market for fisheries products produced by vessels of a certain state. High Seas Task Force The High Seas Task Force comprises a group of fisheries ministers and international NGOs working together to develop an action plan designed to combat IUU fishing on the high seas. Launched in 2003, the Task Force includes fisheries ministers from Australia, Canada, Chile, Namibia, New Zealand and the UK, together with the Earth Institute, IUCN-World Conservation Union, WWF International and the Marine Stewardship Council. The goal of the Task Force is to set priorities among a series of practical proposals for confronting the challenge of IUU fishing on the high seas. A series of expert panels have been convened to identify the legal, economic, scientific and enforcement factors that permit IUU activity to thrive, and then determine key points of leverage that can brought to bear at national, regional, and global levels to minimise the incentives to carry out IUU fishing on the high seas. The completed action plan, published on 3 March 2006, will be placed by ministerial members of the Task Force directly in the hands of other ministers. Regional Fisheries Management Organizations Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) are affiliations of nations that co-ordinate efforts to manage fisheries in a particular region. RFMOs may focus on certain species of fish (e.g. the Commission for the Conservation of Southern bluefin tuna) or have a wider remit related to living marine resources in general within a region (e.g. the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)). This wide diversity of mandates and areas of application, and also effective implementation of regulations, opens up opportunities for IUU vessels. UN high seas processes The present system of high seas governance has evolved over a period of several hundred years, the end result being a patchwork quilt of measures in the form of binding and non-binding instruments with different geographical and legal reaches and different levels of participation. Most legal instruments build on the foundation established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was agreed in 1982 and entered into