Dr Vishal Surbun is a senior lecturer in Maritime Law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), where he has taught an undergraduate module on Maritime Law and postgraduate modules on Incidents of Navigation and The Law of the Sea. He is a founding faculty member of UKZN’s Unit for Maritime Law and Maritime Studies, established in 2012 and is presently the Deputy Academic Leader for Research and Higher Degrees at UKZN’s School of Law. He supervises doctoral and masters students in this Unit. Vishal holds an LL.B, an LL.M in Maritime Law and a PhD. He is a Rhodes Oceans Scholar. Vishal’s research interest broadly lies in the public law aspects of maritime law, particularly the international law of the sea and marine law. He has written on legal aspects of maritime safety and security at sea, especially piracy off the coast of Africa. Underscoring his research is an interest in the distribution of jurisdiction and power of states and regional organisations over various ocean spaces. Vishal is an active member of the Maritime Law Association of South Africa, the Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group and the Commonwealth Legal Education Association. He regularly acts as an external examiner and moderator for various maritime postgraduate modules at several Universities in South Africa. He frequently acts as an expert peer reviewer of contributions for numerous South African law journals and technical publications.