Efforts to negotiate an international management plan for the South Pacific albacore fishery are hampered by the large number of nations with interests in the resource, the difficulty of devising workable, coordinated strategies at the international level, and the immense area over which the albacore resource is distributed. However, the present paper demonstrates that the terms of previous fishery agreements in the South Pacific region may help the nations concerned meet the conditions for successful international regime formation set forth in a model by Owen Young. In particular, these terms have helped foster integrative bargaining, equitable arrangements, salient solutions, effective compliance mechanisms, and international entrepreneurship.
