Half the planet lies outside any country’s border. In those waters, rules have long been thinner than the myths: freedom to fish meant freedom to take; “out of sight” became “out of mind.” The deep ocean and the high seas were treated as a backdrop to coastal concerns, even as they stored carbon and heat, generated oxygen, and held most of Earth’s living space.
The problem was not a lack of treaties so much as a lack of fit. Shipping, fishing, mining, and conservation sat in separate institutional compartments, their mandates rarely adding up to stewardship. Changing the status quo required someone willing to take committee work seriously, and to make diplomats care about places they would never see.
That someone was Kristina Maria Gjerde, a lawyer by training and an ocean advocate by vocation, who died today of pancreatic cancer.
For much of her career Gjerde worked through IUCN, where she became a central architect of efforts to protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. Admirers sometimes called her the “mother of the high seas,” shorthand for her role in moving an obscure idea into the center of international policy.
Her focus sharpened as industrial activity pushed deeper offshore. Bottom trawling destroyed ancient coral systems in minutes, while interest in seabed minerals threatened new damage before earlier harm was understood. She argued that the high seas should not be governed by absence, but by precaution and restraint. Freedom, in her view, required conditions.
Trained in law, Gjerde worked closely with scientists to translate emerging knowledge into forms that could withstand legal scrutiny and political bargaining. She treated biodiversity as a governance problem with tools that could be applied.
What set her apart was endurance. She understood that progress would come through process: draft text, technical workshops, and years of repetition in rooms where attention was scarce. She moved between institutions that rarely spoke to one another, linking marine science to legal standards and legal standards to political feasibility.
Her greatest public milestone was also her most patient one: the campaign that culminated in the 2023 UN Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, often called the High Seas Treaty. Beginning in the early 2000s, she helped turn scattered scientific warnings into something negotiable by building coalitions broad enough to matter and disciplined enough to endure.
Those efforts produced the High Seas Alliance and the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, vehicles for the unglamorous work of aligning NGOs, scientists, and states around a text that could survive contact with geopolitics.
Alongside her policy work, Gjerde taught international marine law, drawn to preparing students for institutions that reward patience more than idealism.
The High Seas Treaty is set to enter into force on January 17th 2026. That date will arrive without her, but not without her fingerprints. For the high seas, which have always been good at swallowing evidence, that is a rare outcome.
