Captain Sean Andrews was a CCW Visiting Research Fellow in Michaelmas term 2023. His lastest book, Naval Constabulary Operations and Fisheries Governance: An Integrated Approach for the Australian Maritime Domain was published in May with Routledge. It is part of the Cass Series on Naval Policy and History
Publisher’s Synopsis: 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.
‘Competition for access to, and exploitation of, fish stock is an issue with significant geopolitical repercussions over international order. This book is a masterclass of practice-led reflection on the challenges of Australia’s fast changing fishery landscape and the need to develop new concepts and capabilities to address it. Sean Andrews commands the narrative about the 'strategic fish' and delivers his expertise as a 'tactical admiral’ superbly’.'
Alessio Patalano, King’s College London, UK
