I’ve been reading your “authoritative advice” and you always side against caution, shoot down every source as being unreliable, counter with one example while locally SCUBA diving (where regulation is far more intense than 100s-1000s of miles from land) and give recs where it is far too general and aspects of it are in fact not safe.
Unless you are out there recording info that refutes these “unreliable sources” (by SCUBA diving, means every part of each ocean multiple times in areas considered fishing areas), I am suspect of your advice and sources that are third hand at best.
My diving was mostly in the South Pacific in the 80s-90s. Observation through diving not only allows you to observe what is there, but also what is not. Apex predators are easy to observe. The rest of the web is more difficult and is often very time intensive. The results of the missing pieces are usually easy to see. Hair algae, decimated kelp forests, ranges of coral being overgrazed, and habitat no longer suitable for a self sustaining ecosystem.
More importantly, observing who is hashing out business deals with locals (who have varying amounts of jurisdiction over fishing rights around various islands) is more umportant. I observed Aussie, Taiwanese and Korean reps of fleets initiate large scale fishing ops upon gaining permission. Parts of Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon islands were in my observations The locals’ end of the deal usually includes cash for the local leaders (maybe a new skiff/outboard) and commodities like tobacco, liquor, and low wage jobs on the fishing boats or piecemeal offers for the younger men to harvest organisms like sea cucumbers (lots of decompression deaths/permanent injuries). The results in the oceans are what I referred to earlier - things you don’t see - from sea cucumbers to apex predators, leaving large holes in the local food chains/webs. When enough of these holes form in the webs, it is like parts of a watch being taken out by people who don’t know or don’t care about watches and how they operate.