Professor Warwick Gullett, Dean of Law at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, and Deputy Director of Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), Australia’s only multidisciplinary university-based centre dedicated to research, education and training on ocean law, maritime security and natural marine resource management, will be in the Caribbean for a very important working visit next week.

The professor’s visit to the region is in line with a 5-year Memorandum of Understanding the parties signed last September, after 14 fisheries professionals from Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Suriname, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent & the Grenadines attended the first Fisheries Law and Management Training Workshop at the University of Wollongong in Australia developed jointly for them by the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) and ANCORS.

Dr. Gullett will deliver a series of public lectures on developments in fisheries, and ocean law and policy during his visit to Barbados, Jamaica and Belize.

He is scheduled to arrive on Monday, April 22, in Barbados, where he will also participate in the Eleventh Meeting of the CRFM Forum of Fisheries Officers. While in Barbados, the professor will meet with representatives of the Fisheries Department, the Law Faculty and the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), UWI. He will also be hosted at a public Lecture at Accra Beach Hotel on Thursday, April 25.

The topic of that session will be Fisheries and the environment: Fisheries management legislation and principles of international law. It will address issues and challenges affecting the implementation of international principles, such as the precautionary principle in domestic fisheries law to protect, conserve and manage fisheries and marine biodiversity.

Professor Gullett travels next to Jamaica, where he is due to meet on Monday, April 29 and Tuesday, April 30 with officials of the Jamaica Fisheries Division and the Ministry of Agriculture; the Principal of Norman Manley Law School, and Head of the Department of Life Sciences at UWI-Jamaica.

In Jamaica, Dr. Gullett will also deliver a public lecture, this time focusing on The Transposition of Principles of International Law into Domestic Legislation to Combat Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) Fishing. Emphasis will be especially placed on the legal and policy framework for protection, conservation and management of marine living resources, with special focus on combating the scourges of poaching and IUU fishing by foreign and domestic fishers.

The third and final leg of Professor’s Gullett’s Caribbean tour is Belize, where he has meetings scheduled with the Fisheries Department, the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute, the University of Belize, and the CRFM, headquartered in Belize.

Professor Warwick Gullet will deliver his third public lecture on the occasion of this Caribbean tour on Thursday, May 2, on the topic, Marine Resource Management with a Focus on the Role of Using the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Maritime Boundary Delimitation and Fisheries Cases. During the presentation, Professor Gullett will examine the process and risk of asking the ICJ to determine a maritime boundary dispute (which would follow a sovereignty determination), and he will explain the evolving approach in international law to determine maritime boundaries.

Before his return to Australia on Friday, May 3, Professor Gullett intends to further consultations with officials of CRFM member states and the Secretariat, as well as UWI, to strengthen collaboration between ANCORS/University of Wollongong and key Caribbean regional institutions in fisheries and marine resource management.