Spectacular Fishing: Embodying Sovereignty in the Post-Brexit Channel Islands and the South China Sea

In early May 2021, about 80 French fishing boats blocked the port of St. Helier on Jersey Island, about 20 nautical miles from the Normandy coast, in protest against post-Brexit regulations that led the UK to deny French fishers access to the island’s fishing waters. Overnight, they were turned into  ilegal fishers. Historically, Jersey controlled its waters up to three nautical miles while the waters beyond this limit were considered the common fishing grounds of France and Jersey. In an escalation of a dispute over post-Brexit access to the common seas, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson dispatched two British gunboats to Jersey to ‘protect’ the island. In support of French fishers, France also sent naval patrol boats and threatened to cut off the electricity supply to Jersey. The fishing dispute between the two countries continued over the summer and, in October 2021, the French government announced plans for a ban on the landing of British fishing vessels in designated ports unless the UK and Jersey provided more licenses for French vessels seeking to fish in formerly ‘common waters’. In response, Boris Johnson vowed to do ‘whatever is necessary to ensure UK interests’ and to protect British fishers if France acted on its threats. In retaliation, he pledged that French and EU fishing vessels would go through ‘rigorous’ checks when in ‘British waters’.The UK–France dispute over fishing access to waters shared by the two countries is not unique and finds an echo on the other side of the globe, in the South China Sea (SCS). The SCS is a maritime region surrounded by large populations in Vietnam, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia that depend heavily on fish protein for their diet and income. The SCS is also the object of disputed sovereignty around the Paracels and Spratlys – two archipelagos claimed in whole by China and Vietnam and in part by a number of Southeast Asian countries and Taiwan. The increasing imbalance between supply and demand for fish has turned the SCS into a bitterly contested battleground – not just for state sovereignty, oil and gas but, above all, for marine resources, particularly between Vietnam and China (Wirth 2016; Zhang 2016; Kraska & Monti 2015; Dupont & Baker 2014).