As this review is being written the Spanish fishing vessel Estai is heading out to sea after being released upon the payment of a bail bond. It had been arrested by Canada in international waters, where it had been fishing for Greenland halibut, a little outside the Canadian EEZ but still upon the Grand Banks. This incident provides a graphic illustration of the failure of the “new international law of fisheries”, as found in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, adequately to address the problems which confront it. Such a charge cannot, however, be levelled at Professor Burke’s work of that name: for this book provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the legal regime established by the Convention and subjects it to penetrating critical scrutiny.

The opening chapter reviews the steps towards the acceptance of extended coastal state jurisdiction over maritime spaces through UNCLOS I and II and the “build up” to UNCLOS III, including the Fisheries Jurisdiction cases before the ICJ. The following chapters examine, first, the jurisdiction of the coastal state within its national zone beyond the territorial sea and, secondly, the content of the right to “freedom of fisheries” upon the high seas. Subsequent chapters look at discrete issues that cut across the jurisdictional divide, these being anadromous species, highly migratory species and marine mammals. The work closes with an examination of the means of enforcement generally available to states, looking in particular detail at the parameters of coastal state enforcement in the EEZ. The bulk of each chapter is taken up with an examination of the