Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/395

Rh de Droit International at its meeting in Paris in 1904. The general opinion was that such an extension was desirable, and it was agreed without a dissenting vote to recommend an increase to six miles, after the proposal to extend it to ten miles had been rejected by twenty-five votes against ten.

However, in view of the approval which the three-mile margin has received in international conventions, legislative bodies and judicial tribunals, the indefiniteness of centuries ago has become the vested rights of to-day, the once plastic cement which the workmen molded has now become so set and solidified with the passage of time that it is useless to discuss an extension of the distance of exclusive jurisdiction without absolute international agreement.

It can not be denied that such an extension would be vigorously opposed by some influential interests. Doubtless one is safe in stating that the trawl fishermen of Great Britain, for instance, would unquestionably object to it, and for very practical reasons. Exclusive of the White Sea and the Baltic, the trawling area outside the three-mile limit of northern and western Europe approximates 450,000 square miles. An extension of the marginal belt to six miles would place 81,000 square miles of this area within the territorial jurisdiction of continental countries, and an extension four miles further would exclude British fishermen from 135,000 square miles of the best trawling grounds, an area nearly equal to that of the North Sea. As the British trawling fleet greatly exceeds that of all the continental countries, the fishermen of Great Britain would have much to lose and nothing to gain by the extension.

On this side of the Atlantic, acceptance of the extension would depend very largely on how it would affect the rights and treaty privileges of the United States along the shores of the British provinces, which probably more than any other factor has influenced the present firm position of this government respecting a marginal belt of a marine league only.

More important from an economic point of view than several miles increase in the width of the marine belt is a clear and unquestioned international recognition of vested rights in attempts to exploit and develop definite areas of ground under the high seas, as in the cultivation of sponges, corals, pearl oysters, etc. There is a distinction in law as well as in fact between such an industry and a fishery dependent on the pursuit of free swimming fish in the ocean. Oysters, sponges and the like represent a peculiar kind of property. They are not feræ naturæ, as they do not stray nor do they require taming, hence ownership may be acquired in them.

It can not be affirmed that this extension of territorial jurisdiction to cultivated sea bottoms has ever been made the basis of any treaty