I am sure that anyone interested in understanding the opportunities our marine resources offer our government and its peoples in respect of job creation, earning a very good living income, work satisfaction, and generally bolstering our overall economy through export earnings, foreign exchange and fiscus income from additional taxation will learn a lot from this book.

This front cover brilliantly exemplifies the absolute irony of government decision making. A previous director general decided to motivate the need for Branch Fisheries to develop an improved fleet of larger patrol vessels in order to be better able to apply effective Compliance control over a greater are area of our oceans.

With a minimum of consultation with affected parties, he failed to pick up that there was an increasing shortage of manpower to crew such vessels due to the continual growth of our fisheries. So he, not unreasonably, contracted out their management. A subsequent director decided to cut costs and approached the navy, who, theoretically, had joint responsibility for fisheries patrol work. This did not work out and two years later they handed the vessels back to Fisheries, now considerably in a worse condition through wear, tear, and lack of maintenance

However in the meantime, some politicians persuaded the powers to be authorise an order for initially three, subsequently increased to four, very fancy patrol vessels, whose main work would be to handle Fisheries Patrol!. No concerns were considered that the navy had already failed in this line of work, nor that they had many unutilised vessels perfectly suitable with minor alteration and upgrading to effect such work.

So, we can assume that some got handsomely rewarded for their efforts, whilst very little has been seen of such patrol work.