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Piracy and high speed ocean pursuits are the stuff of books and movies.

But PhD candidate Caroline Coombs is up to her neck in it, as she researches the doctrine of hot pursuit under international law.

Caroline is a lawyer and, after working in a legal capacity for the military, has a love of the law of the sea. She is doing her research within the Oceans Institute (OI), supervised by Professor Erika Techera, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Deputy Director of OI.

The Institute staged its first Postgraduate Student Conference last month, with 17 PhD candidates presenting their research.  Subjects included nitrogen fixing, coral resilience, tidal dynamics, ecology of reef sharks and Hot Pursuit.

"Hot pursuit is a limited but significant exception to the freedom of the high seas," explained Caroline Coombs. "It is a legal tool which permits coastal states to conduct law enforcement over a range of issues in its maritime zones. Australia has played a role in recent development of hot pursuit due to the series of arrests conducted in the waters near Heard and Macquarie Islands. Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing was observed and  a warning was given to the suspect vessel which fled onto the high seas.

"Pursuit and apprehension in the ocean to the south and south-west of Australia is extremely challenging due to the weather and the proximity to Antarctic waters. A number of hot pursuits have been made possible with the assistance of South African, French and UK vessels, contributing to a new concept of ‘multilateral pursuit'.

"The motivation for the enforcement of the laws of hot pursuits in these circumstances cannot be underestimated but is difficult to quantify. IUU fishing is a political issue in terms of Australian ownership of marine resources and preservation of so-called ‘Australian jobs' and industry as well as the environmental concerns generally," she said.

"However, the approach to prevention of IUU fishing is largely a bipartisan one and it has never even been close to constituting a significant election issue. The appropriate management and ownership of marine resources contributes to both the long-term security of marine industries and ecological sustainability."

The winners of the best presentations were Julia Reisser and Matt Fraser.

Julia spoke about marine plastic pollution around Australia and the search for solutions. She explained that Scanning Electron Microscopy images showed evidence of a rich and diverse biofilm growing on some plastics.

"This shows that the ocean is a potential environment for the finding of species capable of biodegrading plastics," she said.

Her research is supervised by Winthrop Professor Chari Pattiaratchi, Dr Michele Thums and Dr Chris Wilcox.

Matt's research into the phosphorus cycling in seagrass sediments looked at how seagrass could grow in nutrient-poor ecosystems.  This includes Shark Bay, where the seagrasses contribute significantly to the health of the entire ecosystem and Shark Bay's status as a World Heritage Site.

His research is supervised by Winthrop Professor Gary Kendrick, Dr Pauline Grierson and Associate Professor Greg Skrzypek.