Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/396

392 or agreement, or has even been the subject of diplomatic discussion. With the single exception of Vattel, the older writers on international law were silent on this matter, and even Vattel seems not to have clearly distinguished it from the exercise of jurisdiction over migratory fishes in the seas near the marginal belt, a doctrine which has long since been discredited.

Very natural was the silence of the older publicists on this subject, since there was no occasion for recognition of this view until a very recent period. The spirit of scientific investigation and of industrial development is everywhere, and in few directions have these made greater progress in the last score or two of years than in the possibilities of cultivating the sea bottoms. Millions of dollars' worth of oysters are now grown on areas which thirty years ago were barren wastes. Biologists are obtaining excellent results in sponge culture in the Gulf of Mexico, and are investigating coral growth in the Mediterranean. Careful observers are awakening to the possibilities of pearl culture, not simply to raise the mollusks which yield pearls fitfully and at rare intervals, but to insure and to increase the yield of pearls within these mollusks, and thus to obtain remunerative returns without the arduous toil and the element of hazard inseparable from pearling as now prosecuted.

And must the work of these investigators, must the enterprises which they stimulate, be restricted to the bounds of the marine league while the broad areas of shallow bays and gulfs remain barren? Must we plant and harvest but along the wave-washed shores of the maritime belt and leave the rich meadows of the sea bottoms to waste? Must the work be handicapped by the refusal of international law to concede to these enterprises the elements of ownership, which must be wholly lacking unless territorial jurisdiction apply to the areas which they exploit?

Numerous instances exist in which fisheries for pearl oysters, etc., prosecuted beyond the marginal belt, are the subject of fostering care on the part of a government or its people. By careful supervision as to close seasons, size limits, etc., and in some cases special preparation of the bottom and even removal of predaceous enemies, the output from these areas is conserved and increased. Instances of this kind, under state authority or recognition, may be regarded as an occupation of the bed of the sea, and territorial jurisdiction should rightly extend to them even though they be carried on beyond the marginal belt ordinarily recognized by international law. Even Grotius's Mare Uberum is founded upon the old doctrine of Roman law that there can be no property in anything without occupation. And while the vagrant waters of the ocean can not be subjected and occupied, the sponge beds and pearl reefs can be even as the hills and the prairies.

This view is founded not only on justice, but likewise on necessity.