Big, bold and blue: lessons from Australia’s marine protected areas, edited by James Fitzsimons and Geoff Westcott, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing, 2016, 402 pp

In Big, Bold and Blue, Fitzsimons and Westcott attempt to bring together the history, current status and future directions of Australian marine protected area (MPA) networks, as well as the perspectives from different sectors on these networks, in order to inform other nations on how they can progress their own MPA networks and achieve targets determined by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Whilst this volume provides the reader with a wealth of evidence regarding the Australian experience, the nature of such an overview means that depth of knowledge on any one topic often cannot be provided and the reader is occasionally left wanting more.