Naval Constabulary Operations and Fisheries Governance: An Integrated Approach for the Australian Maritime Domain

This book offers an analysis of naval constabulary operations, in particular Australian fisheries patrols, and challenges the widely accepted Anglo-American school of maritime thought.

In the Indo-Pacific, fisheries and the activities of fishing boats are of increasing strategic importance in Australia’s region - Australia’s Four Oceans. Issues of overfishing, population growth and climate change are placing growing pressure on fish as a resource, and in doing so are making fisheries more significant, and significant on a strategic as opposed to simply an economic or environmental level. When, combined with the growing use of fishing vessels as para-naval forces, it is clear that the activities of fishing vessels, whether fishing or not fishing, are matters of considerable strategic relevance. This book illuminates contemporary seapower challenges, explains and defines maritime security and examines and refines existing theory to advance a set of new or refined concepts to help frame the on-water activities of constabulary operations -- reducing the possibility of on-water miscalculation between states.

This book will be of much interest to students and scholars of naval studies and sea power, maritime strategy, maritime security and International Relations.

Sean A. Andrews is a Captain in the Royal Australian Navy. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New South Wales. He was most recently a Fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre, Pembroke College, Oxford University and is now a fellow at the National Security College, Australian National University.