Chapter 8. Fish Traps of the Crocodile Islands: Windows on Another World

Contemporary marine science, its utility and influence on regulation and government policy

“…This is in large contrast to the way Indigenous peoples define their lands. For many such peoples across Australia (e.g., Kearney and Bradley, 2009;James, 2019;Mayala Inninalang Aboriginal Corporation, 2019) and also the Pacific Islands (Tilot et al, 2021), the sea is not only a physical and temporal space, but also a mental map of ancestral journeys and ritual renewals with a view to nurturing and passing on place-based knowledge and its biological, cultural, and linguistic endowment to future generations (see also Vierros et al, 2020). This is truly a sustainable view of ocean use by society and perhaps broader than that envisaged by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.…”

“…The former holds that the sea and seabed within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are "common to all men", with individual nation states sharing in its management and the benefits of its exploitation (Guntrip, 2003; see also Smyth and Isherwood, 2016). The latter relates to the Indigenous understanding of the sea as an inseparable extension of the land (e.g., Yunupingu and Muller, 2009;James, 2019) and hence subject to the same aspects of custodianship, exclusive resources and customary law. Hence "Sea Country" and "Saltwater Country" refers to any environment within broader traditional estates that are associated with the sea or saltwater-including coastal areas, estuaries, beaches, marine areas and islands and their living and non-living natural resources (Rist et al, 2019).…”