Compulsory pilotage and the law of the sea: Lessons learned from the Torres Strait

The safety of navigation is an essential aspect of the maintenance of international trade and commerce and is well established in multiple international legal frameworks. However, in recent decades, as coastal states have begun to raise environmental and security concerns, navigational freedoms have been subject to constraint often based upon the need for the safety of navigation. This has been reflected in initiatives by Australia to promote compulsory pilotage in the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait, and other related initiatives such as vessel traffic systems within major waterways in addition to ports and harbours. This chapter considers how comfortably some of these initiatives sit with UNCLOS and whether what has been occurring is jurisdictional creep or whether the freedom of navigation is just coming under greater forms of control.