Biologging, Marine Scientific Research and UNCLOS: Toward a Third Paradigm

This article supplements a complex techno-legal examination of the status of biologging under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The principal question that drives the analysis is whether biologging, as an emerging methodology, falls under the regulatory scope of marine scientific research (MSR). Through a diametric critique of two well-established schools of thought, one that favors extraterritorial freedom without the consent of the coastal state and the other that advocates for broad jurisdictional control, the authors expose the conceptual shortcomings and doctrinal inflexibility present in both viewpoints. Essentially, the article reinterprets biologging as a hybrid epistemic practice that disrupts conventional binaries of control, consent, and spatiality. In the end, it defines a “third paradigm,” that is, an adaptive, relational, and normatively pluralistic approach that balances state sovereignty with the needs of scientific progress and environmental protection. This reimagines UNCLOS as a living tool that can adapt to the needs of twenty-first-century ocean governance.