Kristina gjerde, pioneering champion of international ocean protection, dies at 68

Kristina Maria Gjerde, the influential marine lawyer who dedicated her career to protecting the world’s unguarded oceans, died December 26th from pancreatic cancer at age 68. Known as the “mother of the high seas,” Gjerde transformed how the international community approaches conservation in waters beyond any nation’s borders—a vast realm covering half the planet that had long operated under a chaotic patchwork of rules favoring exploitation over protection.

For decades, the deep ocean and high seas existed in a legal gray zone where “freedom to fish meant freedom to take,” as shipping, fishing, mining, and conservation interests operated in separate institutional silos with little coordination. This fragmented governance system left Earth’s largest living space—waters that store carbon, generate oxygen, and regulate global climate—vulnerable to industrial activities like bottom trawling that flattened ancient seafloor ecosystems.

Working primarily through the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Gjerde spent her career bridging the gap between marine science and international law. She understood that protecting biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction required someone willing to navigate complex diplomatic negotiations and make policymakers care about remote places they would never see. Her persistence and expertise in transforming “committee work” into meaningful conservation action helped elevate high seas protection from an obscure environmental concern into a recognized global responsibility.

Gjerde’s legacy lives on in the growing international movement to establish comprehensive protections for the world’s shared ocean commons, ensuring future generations inherit healthy marine ecosystems rather than depleted wastelands.