I can understand completely your unease, Grant. But to expand the
thing from the terr. waters to EEZ's is really expanding the notion
in order to feel more at ease, at the expense of pouring even more
water into the sovereign wine. I would say that things at sea are, by
nature and by legal status, different from things at sea. Since terr.
waters are almost the same as inland waters (save a very big 'but', I
know: the right of passage), but EEZ's are much more 'everyones land'
(like Michael likes to say) than terr. waters, I'd concede the terr.
waters to be like dry territory, but to call islands detached thus
from the main land 'enclaves' is a bit too much for me, too.
Maybe it would be much better to apply the definition 'en-/ex-
/whatever-clave' to dry-separated, rather than to wet-separated dry
parts. After all, all this maritime boundary-talk starts from _dry_
parts! (and based on that, the coast line, and after that, the base
line, and after that, 12 nm, and after that, .......)
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., granthutchison@c... wrote:
> I guess I feel unhappy with using the 12nm limit, simply because it
> does chop up island groups that *feel* contiguous - Michael's 14
bits
> of the Coral Sea Island Territory for instance, or the several bits
> of the Hawaiian chain. I realise that 12nm is being used because
its
> the nearest maritime equivalent to land sovereignty, but even this
> coastal area is not "sovereign" in the way land territories are -
> countries are obliged to allow reasonable through-going traffic
> within the 12-mile limit, for instance, whereas the same does not
> apply on land.
> So maybe we could choose some other coastal limit that does less
> violence to the idea of contiguous island territories? For me, the
> 200nm EEZ does the job better, linking islands into natural
groupings
> with parent territories and each other, and making exclaves of only
> those that are quite markedly "cut off" from parent territory by
> sheer distance or by intervening nations. To see how the world
looks
> with this sort of maritime 'clave definition, take a look at the
map
> here:
>
> http://www.maritimeboundaries.com/
>
> This looks good to me - fewer pointless (my view!) claves, and some
> maritime tripoints by way of compensation.
> Anyone agree?
>
> BTW, for short descriptions of what the various coastal zones imply
> see:
>
> http://www.auslig.gov.au/marbound/ambisbig.htm
>
> which also has a nice map of Australia with the various zones
marked
> in to compare and contrast.
>
> Grant