Figure 2. Discrimination of the world's exclusive economic zones (EEZs) according to their management effectiveness.

Effectiveness is defined in terms of scientific robustness, policymaking transparency, implementation capability, and extent of fishing capacity, subsidies, and access to foreign fishing. Each attribute was quantified with a set of questions, whose answers were summarized into a single scale using multidimensional scaling (see Materials and Methods). For display purposes, each scale was divided into four quarters aligned from worst- to best-case scenarios (each quarter is color coded as indicated at the bottom of the figure). Our assessment of fishery management effectiveness started with the classification of all analyzed EEZs among the four quarters on the scale of scientific robustness. The EEZs within each of those quarters were then classified among the four quarters on the scale of policymaking transparency, and then those EEZs classified among the quarter of the next attribute, with the subdivision continuing until all EEZs were classified in all attributes. The size of the bubbles is proportional to the number of EEZs classified in each quarter. For purposes of display, subsidies, overcapacity, and fishery access agreements were summarized in a single scale with multidimensional scaling; full results are provided in the Figure S1.