State Obligations and the Fragmentation of Regional Legal Regimes in Governing Illegal Fishing Marketing Networks in the Strait of Hormuz: Implications for Coastal Food Security

The Strait of Hormuz is widely recognised as a critical chokepoint for global energy transportation, yet its fisheries governance has received limited attention in legal scholarship. This article examines how fragmentation within the regional legal regime creates gaps in state obligations that may enable illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and associated marketing activities to persist. Employing a normative (doctrinal) legal research method supported by contextual secondary data, the study analyses the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the 2009 Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the instruments of the Regional Commission for Fisheries (RECOFI), and the domestic fisheries laws of Iran and Oman, with Indonesia serving as a parameterised comparator. The findings indicate that Iran has ratified neither UNCLOS nor the PSMA, whereas Oman is a party to both, leaving RECOFI without an effective, binding mechanism for joint surveillance and data exchange. As direct field evidence of marketing network operations in the Strait is unavailable, this aspect is treated as a working hypothesis, while the assessments of food security implications and five-year scenarios are presented as inferential and exploratory analyses. The article proposes a Collaborative Governance Model as a feasible response grounded in existing legal instruments.