Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the Earth with ruin - his control

Stops with the shore

— Byron

For nearly 30 years, legal control of the sea has actually stopped 200 miles from the shore, but even that is about to change. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea allows states to extend their limits beyond 200 miles if they can show that the continental shelf beyond their coastline extends that far. So long as they can produce the necessary scientific data, and so long as the extra margin is at least 100 miles from the point at which the sea reaches a depth of 2.5km, they will be granted rights over the natural resources on and under the seabed up to 350 miles from land. For countries that ratified the convention before May 13th 1999, only four months now remain for the submission of their claims: the deadline is May 13th. A scramble for territory is nearing its climax.

In all, about 15m square kilometres are at stake. That is about half the area involved in the 19th-century scramble for Africa, and some big claims have already been lodged: Canada is seeking 1.7m sq km and Australia 2.5m. Many of the countries that stand to gain most relative to their size, though, are poor and small: Barbados, Mauritius and the Seychelles, for instance. Eight Pacific island nations, among them Fiji, Palau and Tonga, are claiming a total of 1.5m sq km.

... contd.