THE LAW AT SEA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82S00697R000300100001-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 18, 1975
• Content Type: NSPR

Apipmmt
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : C
;The. New York Times Magazine/May 18, 1975
82S00697R000300100001-5
A tidal wave of troubles i?` at hand
over territorial rights, fisheries, treasures on the bottom and
the misuse of the oceans as the greatest dump.
By Richard A. Frank
" GENEVA. It is the year 2000. The coastal pow-
ers have extended their sovereignty to the centers
of the oceans. Cargo and military vessels must- pay
tribute as they pass from one sovereignty zone to
another or as they transit straits through which
passage once was free. Conflict between the "have"
and "have-not" countries, as governments jostle
over the resources of the seabed, keeps the world in
,a state of tension. Fish are a rarity; the few species
that survive taste rather odd, for they inhabit an
element befouled by enormous amounts of pollu-
tion. In most coastal areas, swimming in the sea is
forbidden by law. The contamination has killed
most of the sea's phytoplankton, the primary source
of the earth's oxygen. The environment needed to
sustain life on earth is wearing away.
This picture of the woeld a quarter-century from
no., may seem unduly dire, yet it is only a projec-
tion of current trends. Four major controversies?
over territorial seas and strategic straits, over the
fish in the oceans, over the oil and mineral riches
of the ? seabed and over marine pollution?have
merged into the one overwhelming problem of
' establishing new regulations for the watery two-
thirds of the earth. Arai while? all governments
acknowledge that the peace of the world and man-
kind's very future are at stake, the powerful com-
peting interests at work in each area of controversy
have thrown the technicalities of the problem into
the swirl of a multinational political contest.
Today, there are no effective regulations for
conservation of fisheries, or against unilat-
eral extension of national controls seaward, or
-against use of the oceans as the world's great
garbage dump. There is only a record of four in-
. conclusive attempts since 1958 to, organize for
orderly use and exploitation of dm seas. The last
attempt, the international Conference on the Law'
Of the Sea in Geneva, has just concluded with no
agreement by the delegations on the major issues?
only with a draft text prepared by the committee
chairmen that could serve as the basis for further
negotiation. About the only clear decision was to
convene yet another conference ? in New' York,
next March.
And it is by no means certain that national ap-
petites and the pressures of technological advance
can be kept hi check for another year. If they can't,
the last restraints may he abandoned, and with
them any chance of an international solution
averting the kind of situation described above.
It is only in the past two decades that the 17th-
century concept of the sea as an unchangeable in-
finitude of freedom, purity and fish resources has
had to be discarded as obsolete, to the psychologi-
cal discomfort of a race of man divested of its last
frontier. As various coastal nations asserted sov-
ereignty and economic hegemony over different
-two conferences, in 1958 and 1960, to reconcile
these claims. The delegates wrote three treaties
permitting coastal states to extend sovereignty sea-
ward and to adopt fish conservation measures over
adjacent waters (without stipulating the outer
limits in either case), and giving those states sole
rights over resources on or below the seabed to a
depth of 200 meters?or to whatever depth permit-
ted exploitation. A fourth treaty reasserted freedom
of navigation, overflight, fishing and placement of
submarine cables and pipelines on the "high seas."
The treaties, in short, codified what had been ac-
cepted and left unsettled what had not, including-
where the high seas began, and none of it was
? enough to cope with the conflict that ,the tech-
nological advances of the nineteen-sixties brought
in their wake. Fishing metamorphosed from the
cockleshell boats of yesteryear to factory ships
harvesting fish stocks by sonar and helicopter. Oil
was discovered in seabed areas beyond 200 meters
--in-depth, and new machinery was built to tap it. So
was equipment to retrieve the nodules?lumps
varying in size from golf balls to footballs?that
are scattered over the ocean bottom and contain
enough copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt to
supply the earth's needs for generations. The effort
to write a modern law of the sea before competition
burst out of control became a race ,against time.
In 1970, proclaiming ocean areas beyond terri-
torial-sea limits the "common heritage" of mankind,
rthe U. N. General Assembly called for another con-
ference, this time to produce a comprehensive
treaty settling all the issues that had been skirted
before, and that had arisen in the interim as a result
of new technological progress. The complexity Of
the problems overwhelmed the 2,000 delegates of
148 governments who met for 10 weeks in the sum-
mer of 1974 in Caracas, Venezuela. The same
proved true of the eight-week conference that ended
a week ago in Geneva. The primary disputes re-
main. What are these issues, and why are they so
difficult to iesolve?
-TERRITORIAL SEAS AND STRAITS
The world of the 17th century was steeped in the
vision of the inviolate ocean, which "can be neither
seized nor enclosed," in the words of Hugo Grotius,
? the Dutch expositor of the principle of freedom of
the seas, for it "rather possesses the earth than is
possessed by it." But the privateering off the coast
of the young American republic became a nuisance,
and President Thomas Jefferson made the first
significant dent on free navigation by extending
United States jurisdiction out to sea 3 miles, the
farthest distance a cannonball could travel. Other
maritime nations followed suit.
In clinging in recent times to the 3-Mile limit as
the international norm, in spite of the trend of'
ter
many coastalcountries to push theirterritorial sea,
distances out to sea, the United Nations sponsored
clMs
mys otpo leit States
Richard A. FranAPPIVVACVPIIRRI9Restgal/08/07 it itOtOdA Asecountes as Main and
for Law and Social Policy, a Washington-based Japan have been concerned with something far
public-interest law firm.
1 II
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removed from obsolete criteria of coastal gunnery.
If 12 miles, the widely favored compromise, became
international law, more than 100 straits between 6
and 24 miles in width would fall within the
sovereign jurisdiction of the adjacent coastal states.
Under the 1958 treaty, vessels of other countries
must be granted "innocent passage" through terri-
torial seas?passage that is not "prejudicial to the
peace, good order, or security of the coastal state."
But what that means is in dispute; some countries
hold that passage by a military vessel or any sub-
merged vessel is, per se, not innocent. The change
would mean, for example, that the United States
Sixth Fleet, which has unencumbered passage from
the Atlantic to the Mediterranean through the
Straits of Gibraltar, would retain only the right
of "innocent" transit as interpreted by Britain,
Morocco and Spain. This inhibition on military
mobility might act as a restraint on new adven-
tures like Vietnam, but few naval powers are likely
to take that view of the problem.
The United States and other maritime powers
insist on an explicit guarantee of unimpeded transit
--as opposed to "innocent passage"?through and
over all important straits if 12 miles were ac-
cepted as the new international standard. An
added proviso is that commercial ships and planeS
transiting or overflying the straits be regulated by
international traffic controls. The maritime powers
contend-that any additional restrictions imposed by
the straits states would unduly hamper commercial
shipping and would tend to raise consumer prices
by increasing transport costs. .
The issue has long been deadlocked. The straits
states have wanted to adopt their own traffic and
other regulations and to enforce them unilaterally.
They have also been demanding compensation for
any damage, such as the
ruin of the shorelines caused.
by a recent oil spill froni a
Japanese supertanker in the
Strait of Malacca. But they
came under intense pres-
sure from the maritime pow-
ers at Geneva, and they may
be forced to settle for much
less than they want?perhaps
for limited enforcement rights,
and for compensation in case
of damage involving violation
of transit rules.
OIL AND THE
ECONOMIC ZONE
In 1967, dismayed by the
way things were moving, Mal-
ta's Ambassador to the United,
Nations, Arvid Pardo, made a
landmark speech before the
General Assembly. Pardo, one
of the world's experts on the
subject, called for creation
of an international regime to
govern the exploitation ?of
ocean resources beyond the
limits of national jurisdiction.
He argued that such wealth
should be shared by all, with
most of it going to those
that have least, the develop-
ing countries. The dream he
evoked provided the inspira7
tion for the LaW of the Sea
Conference?and collided al-
most at once with the reality
of national power and what
was conceived as national
self-interest.
Of the 15-billion barrels of
production?a technique ap-
plied after President Truman
proclaimed exclusive national
control over the resources of
the continental shelf (the sea-
bed area adjacent to the
coast) and other coun-
tries followed the American
example. By 1980, offshore
production will account for
30 to 40 per cent of the
total. According to a rather op-
timistic United Nations study,
.the seabed contains an equiv-
alent, of 2,722 billion barrels
of oil, enough to satisfy world
consumption at present levels
for 140 years. At the same
time, the National Petroleum
Council estimates that between
30 and 45 per cent of the oil
in the seabed lies beyond the
continental shelves, at depths
greater than 200 meters. And
the technology is ready for
Undersea oil production at
depths of thousands of feet.
Most of the 120 coastal
states have insisted on uni-
lateral control over oil and
mineral resources well beyond
the limits of present national
jurisdiction ? over what is
known as the "continental
margin," consisting of an un-
dersea continental shelf and
a further decline, the whole
extending as far as 400 miles
from land before the deep
Ocean bottom is reached. The
United States has proposed
a way of bridging the gap
between that position and the
Pardo dream. The coastal
states would retain national
jurisdiction to a depth of 200
meters, and the seabed from
there to the outer edge of the
continental margin would be a
"trusteeship area" administer-
ed by the coastal state on be-
half of the international' com-
munity, with royalties paid to
.an international fund. The
ocean floor beyond that would
be an international area ad-
'ministered by a new inter-
national agency.
The compromise was sen-
sible but doomed?because it
was the suggestion of the
paradigm of the developed
world, and because it envi-
sioned a new form of interna-
tional sharing. The death knell
came when the Middle East
oil-producers' cartel embar-
goed exports in 1973. Con-
suming countries with coast-
lines promptly lost all interest
in sharing ownership of any
area potentially containing oil
or gas reserves. They leaned
instead to a plan for extend-
ing national jurisdiction over
both living and nonliving re-
sources to, say, 50 to 200
miles from the coast.
- The law of the sea confer-
ence has, in effect, agreed
territorial sea and a 200-mile
economic zone?if and when
there is agreement on the
rights and obligations of the
coastal states in those areas.
The essential elements of the
proposed treaty thus remain
unresolved.
Should such a treaty, pro-
viding for a 200-mile econ-
omic zone, emerge from
next year's conference, it will
mean that countries already
benefiting from large produc-
tive coastal areas will get
richer, and the disparity be-
tween them and the land-
locked and otherwise geo-
graphically disadvantaged
will widen. And a 200-mile
economic zone will mean the
nationalization, in effect, of
one-third of the oceans. That
will pose some knotty ques-
tions. For example, if Saare-
maa, Fyn, Masbate, Unimak,
Iturup and the other 500,000
or so subcontinental land
masses called islands are en-
titled to a 200-mile economic
zone, some very small rocks
wlll each end up with more
than 125,000 square miles of
sea and seabed. Indeed, Bri-
tain has taken possession of
a tiny dot in the Atlantic
called Rockhall, presumably
so that it can claim jurisdic-
tion over a 200-mile zone
around the island.
FRUITS DE LA VIER
The most immediate conflict
of interests inherent in the
idea of a 200-mile economic
zone is over fishing rights,
involving a yield of 75 million
tons of seafood a year. Going
beyond the language of the
1958-60 treaties, which permit
coastal conservation schemes,
most coastal countries have
asserted exclusive jurisdic-
tion over fishing 12 miles
out to sea. Long-distance fish-
ing countries like the United
States, the Soviet Union and
Japan have refused to recog-
nize, broader claims, such as
those of Chile, Ecuador and
Peru, which have declared a
200 - mile fishing - jurisdiction
zone amounting, in effect, to
a territorial sea. The countries
asserting those claims have
resorted to armed force
against fishing vessels, as in,
the "cod war" between Ice-
land and England, the "lobster
war" between Brazil and
France and the "tuna war" be-
tween Ecuador and the United
States. Other coastal countries
have concluded bilateral agree-
ments, collecting license fees
from foreign fishermen and
placing limitations on catch,
gear and seasons.
The argument on this issue
centers on the insistence- of
oil produced each yAisprberdd For Relea8e 2001 /08/01t1:41110-RDP8280069t ROD0300400001sZclakning extensive
fishing jurisdiction that they
-one' comes from offshore, vention establiahing a 12-mile
Ifiktftww,
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will not relinquish control.
The 200-mile economic zone,
they say, must encompass the
- fish.
This presents a dilemma for
the United?States. The Ameri-
can fishermen who harvest
cod, halibut and other species
off the United States coasts
account for more than 80 per
cent of the nation's catch;
for them, extending jurisdic-
tion would protect their
grounds from the more effi-
cient and rapacious Soviet,
Norwegian and Japanese
fleets. But the American fleets
that seek shrimp off Brazil
and Mexico and tuna off Peru
and Ecuador would pay dearly
for international codification
of those countries' jurisdic-
tional controls. The United
States, therefore, favors a
species approach. Coastal
states would be given prefer-
ential and - administrative
rights over all coastal fish
and anadromoue species
(which spawn in rivers but
otherwise live in the sea),
with the understanding that
other states, especially those
that traditionally fished the
resource, would be given ac-
cess if the species were not
fully utilized by the coastal
state up to the allowable
catch. Migratory species
would he regulated in part
by a multilateral organization,
over which the United States
could exert some control.
iMany of the coastal states
remain adamant in their insist-
ence on virtually complete
jurisdiction over both coastal
and migratory species in their
200-mile zones. The treaty
language they are willing to
adopt would give only the
vaguest rights to fishermen
of other nations. In any event,
the negotiation on a compre-
hensive fisheries agreement
has focused, just as in the
present bilateral accords, On
division of resources rather
than on prudent management
aimed at maximizing returns
and alleviating the world food
shortage. This approach has
resulted thus far in overfishing
and biological and economic
waste, and shifting from open
access to national control is
not likely to promote gi eate
rationality.
THE DEEP SEABED
What the origin is of the
nodules found plentifully over
thousands of square miles of
ocean bottom, usually far
from land, scientists are not
sure; what the exploitation
of this mineral-rich resource
could mean in economic terms
has nations embroiled in
produces most of its copper,
it imports almost all of its
manganese, cobalt and nickel,
and access to the deep-sea
nodules with their store of
all four minerals would bring
sizable benefits. Several
American companies and oth-
ers in West Germany, Japan,
Britain, France, Belgium and
Canada have been fashioning
the necessary technology.
Within three years or so,
such companies as Howard
Hughes's Summa Corporation,
Kennecott Copper and Ten-
neco's Deepsea Ventures will
be -capable of retrieving the
nodules-from the ocean floor,
15,000 feet-down, by vacuum
_cleanerlike_suction._
The American companies
want to 'proceed quickly, -so
as not to. lose their technologi-
cal ? lead.eAt the, same time,
nodule mining promises to
be an expensive and specula-
eivelausiness,_ with an entry
fee:. of - $250-million or _so,
and some companies are hesi-
tant to begin?thus disclosing
the location of the particular-
ly rich sites?without assur-
ances that competitors could
not interlope. At their urging
in each Congress since 1971;
Senator -Lee Metcalfe Demo::
crat of: Montana, has-intro-
duced. legislation under which
the United States -would
? license- the mining of sites
on the high seas and guaran-
tee investments. The bill has
not moved, so Deepeea Ven-
tures-: 'notified Secretary of
State--Henry Kissinger late
last year of its claim of exclu-
sive mieing Tights over a-60,-
000-square-kilometer area- in
the Pacific and petitioned for
diplomatic protection. The Sec-
retarye replied that -he Was
-not -a registrar of
-
_ claims --
In fact, the United States
rias agreed _in principle.: to
transfer some control ever
mining operations to - a new
eintern,ationsd seabed anthori-
-ty rBufe.4t.has been at
loggerheads with other -gov-
ernments.- The developing
countries envision a new-'eco-
nomic- order :under which
they 'Would -receive benefits
from the harnessing -of the
earth's resources. They have
?demanded that the authority
be an "enterprise," iehich
would itself engage in mining,
and in--which, as members,
? they would have proprietary
interest and control. The
United States and others with
advanced mining technology
have insisted that the author-
1W merely license and regu-
late private companies, with
no limits on production, and
with royalties to be shared
land-based producers like
Zaire, Chile, Canada and the
Soviet eUnion are afraid that
nodule exploitation would de-
crease 'demand for their out-
put and lower its value, and
some of them have tried
every tactic-of delay.
_ The discord surrounding the
-issue was given an unexpect-
ed twist by - :the report
that a strange pair of heavily
equipped :vessels built .aby
Howard- Hughes ?ostensibly
for experimental nodule min-
ing,:in apparent obliviousness
to international negotiation
? - ?
_and domestic -legislation?had
actually been financed by the
Central Intelligence Agency,
at more than $350-million, for
a toprsecret effort to salvage
a sunken Soviet submarine.
Whether the salvage vessel,
Glomar-Explorer, its hulk-
ing barge return to waters-
off Hawaii to complete their
partially-successful operation
of last summer, as the C.I.A._
has proposed, or will now
be .erejiggered"- for nodule.
hunting, as one American in-
telligence official is reported
to have put it, the episode
bemused the conference and
touched on. the side issue of
? espionage under. cover_ of
scientific research. " -
These differences and suspia
cionseeeide,--th-e gevenarriente
are being -asked to ,,ve birth
to a unique internaticaral .or-
ganization with several inter-
n-al organs, a charter of more-
thea 100 articles and a variety
of economic and environmen-
tal regulations.- The skeptics
believe it cannot be done,
and the results of the Geneva
session suggest they are right.
There is still no agreement
ori 'what the basic attributes
of the organization should-bee
-and-the- developing-, countries
have_ turned down an .Ameri-
can -compromise proposal un-
der which part of the eocean
would be mined by companies
and part would be reserved
foe mining by the internation-
al enterprise,:with technical-
and financial assistance from
the developed world. The pro-
posal may even prove to be
unacceptable to :a reformist
Congress in Washington
since the United States min
-leg companies are likely to
be offered tax- benefits as
a -quid pro quo for giving
up some of the mining sites.
.14ABINE POLLUTXON -
The ocean ha i always had
a miraculous capacity to ab-
sorb, digest and degrade con-
taminants, but many scientists
f th th i
potential y exp osive dispute. ear at e Imt to ti,,t
While the United StaAPPR purposes. A itkdif6i3ialsePtH97070 7 dafatiftDR8 2 S 60697 FINK133 0
l the same time,
reached. According to a 1974
7
report by the United States
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric - Administration,
the waste dumped by New
York and other East Coast
cities has combined with tank-
er discharges to form a con-
stant sludge of oil and pla-S-
tics 1 million square miles out
'into the Atlantic and -down
to the Caribbean: as far as
Yucatan. -Thor' Heyerdahl,-
_crossing the' Atlantic in_his
papyrus reed raft, Ra, found
lumps' of solidified oil and
trash' floating literally shore
to shore. Beachesam the west
coast of Africa are a mixture
of sand and oil. The Mediter-
ranean is almost a dead sea.
The Audubon Society reports
an increasing number of
"aquatic anomalies" ? sea-
birds along the coast flying
erratically as if drunk or diz-
zy, before plunging helpleesly
into the sea, hundreds of poi-
soned sea lions crawling up
the California beaches and
traveling a mile inland before
dying.
Environmental conventions
of the past decade have suf-
fered from low standards and
ineffective enforcement.
Nothing better came out of
Geneva, and there is little
prospect of any improvement
at the next conference.
lveast countries refuse to
be made financially liable for
damage by municipal sewage,
industrial wastes or any other
type of pollution. In fact,
the bloc of developing coun-
tries, arguing that the indus-
trialized countries have be-
come industrialized by pollut-
ing the sea, contend that it
is now the developing coun-
tries' turn. They want a more
lenient standard applied to
the "third world," permitting
its members to pollute to
achieve development. There
is little chance of the nations
agreeing on any effective con-
trol of pollution from land.
That leaves pollution by
vessels at sea, principally in
the form of oil spills.
As recently as 1948, no
cargo ship weighed more than
26,000 dead weight tons. By
1973, there were more than
400 oil tankers of 200,000
or more tons, two of them
of 447,000 tons and as long
as five football fields. They
are built with skin-thin steel
hulls and without safety stand-
ards common to other types
of ship. Noel Mostert, in his
book "Supership," finds their
design features "ludicrous."
Many of them are subject
only to standards -and en-
forcement of the states where
-they are registered, and "flag
1)100i _8ke Panama and
Liberia provide rock-bottom
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)
V
?
The' coastal nations are on the verge of claiming "economic zones" for themselves 200 miles out to sea.
But what happens when a country claims a tiny island with a 200-mile zone of its own, cutting' across
.someone else's zone? And what about other nations that have been harvesting the resources in those areas
the map on facing
have made some progress, bat
not enough.
as part of the high seas? The problem, illustrated here symbolically in an area circled on
page, is one of a 'number that are rife with potential conflict.
standards and little if any
enforcement. The maritime
countries seem willing to re-
quire compliance with inter-
nationally accepted standards,
but these would be ' promul-
gated under the auspices of
the Intergovernmental Mari-
time Consultative Organiza-
tion, a U.N. specialized agen-
cy that is dominated by the
shipping industry and that
has always adopted the
lowest common denominator.
With understandably little
faith in international action,
Canada sent shocks through
the maritime and oil indus-
tries in 1970 by declaring.
pollution jurisdiction out to
100 miles, and some govern-
ments want that approach.
adopted generally. The United
States, unwilling to go that
far, has proposed that states
establish and enforce stand-
ards for vessels using their
ports.
The future looks ominous.
The oceans will see more tank-
er_ traffic, deeper oil rigs
and pipelines and huge under-
sea oil storage tanks. As pop-
ulation and living standards
increase, se will waste, in-
cluding radioactive wastes in
concrete drums that may not
remain leakproof forever. The
dark "plumes" of red clay
discard from deepsea mining
form over large areas of the
ocean surface and take five
years to filter down just
through 100 yards of the eu-
photic zone?the top layer of
water, with enough sunlight
in it to sustain most of the
life in the ?ocean?and no one
is sure of the consequences.
Some nuclear plants will be
sited at sea. Their proponents
claim that the possibility of
leakage is remote. But what
if the one-in-a-million leak
is plutonium? With a horrify-
ing half-life of 25,000 years,
plutonium is so cancer-pro-
ducing that a concentration
the size of a meatball could
destroy life on earth.
Even without such ac-
cidents, failure to adopt a
comprehensive and effective
environmental protection sys-
tem. will lead to pollution of
the oceans in the fullest sense.
"If the oceans become pollut-
ed," says John Knauss, Ma-
rine Affairs. Provost at the
University of Rhode Island,
"they will probably remain
polluted on any time scale
meaningful to man." Jacques
Piccard, the Swiss oceanog-
rapher, warns that if the
momentum does not change,
life in the seas will be extin-
guished within two or three
decades.
ankind has not
succeeded at such
tasks as urban
planning, dis-
armament and making the
world's food supply meet
demand; perhaps it is failing
now at the task of preserving
the ocean for free communica-
tions and sustenance of life.
Both the Caracas and Gen-
eva conferences oriented their
efforts toward allocating re-
sources among countries and
protecting military rights rath-
er than maximizing ocean
benefits for mankind at large.
The attempts at allocation
Most countries will near
consider a new wave of ura
lateral extensions of territorial
seas. Many may extend fist-
ing rights 200. miles out fe
sea. Some may claim jurisdk-
tion over the seabed resources
to the end of the continental
margin. In the United Statea
some form of legislation estala
lishing 200 miles of fishirg
jurisdiction will probably 1st
adopted, and bills for Federal
licensing of deep-sea minirg
and for a 200-mile pollutikn
control zone will also be de-
bated. The unhappy choice is
thus between "going unilat-
eral"?a course leading to dis-
putes that may or may rat
yield to bilateral or regiong
solutions?and waiting for yet
another international confer-.
ence in 1976 in the hope that
somehow, despite the pow
record of the past two dee.
ades, something happens to
make the delegates write a
sensible and effective law at
the sea. IN
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