On April 29, 1958, the Convention on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas was signed in Geneva, Switzerland. This treaty was one of the first international agreements to address the conservation of marine resources beyond national jurisdiction. It established principles for the sustainable use of fish stocks and encouraged states to cooperate in the management of shared resources. The convention was part of the first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and laid the groundwork for later agreements on high seas fisheries.

The 1958 convention influenced maritime literature, with writers like Rachel Carson and Jacques Cousteau referencing it in their works on ocean conservation. The treaty also inspired the development of 'ocean poetry,' a genre that explores the legal and ethical dimensions of marine resource use. Its principles were debated in the environmental poetry of the 1960s and 1970s.