Martin:
> To date, only the UK has
> formally conceded that one of its insular features is a legal rock
> rather than a full-blown island, namely Rockall.
Does that mean that the U.K. no longer claims an EEZ around Rockall?
Or are they holding out on the basis of its "habitability"
and "economic life"? (The map at www.maritimeboundaries.com shows an
EEZ around Rockall, but it's a couple of years old.)
The most interesting example of all these loosely-defined potential
claims that I've encountered is the Tongan EEZ claim based on the
Minerva Reefs, which is shown in the maritime boundaries map at
www.maritimeboundaries.com. This closes off what I've called the
South Fiji Basin high seas enclave from the general high seas, but it
is a particularly dubious claim that Prescott doesn't recognise in
his maps. (He doesn't chart New Zealand's claim based around
L'Esperance Rock in the Kermadecs, either, leaving the South Fiji
Basin connected to the general high seas both north and south of the
Kermadec chain.)
The story with the Minerva Reefs goes like this:
The reefs are awash at high tide apart from a few coral boulders that
come and go with storm erosion of the reefs. They are closer to
Fijian land than Tongan land, so the EEZ median line would leave them
in Fiji. But the Tongans claim them, based on a historical connection
(I don't know
perhaps they fished there). So the King of Tonga
himself landed and supervised the building of a couple of
coral "shelters" - just blocks the size of a desk that stand above
high tide. This might well be interpreted as building an artificial
island, which the Tongans shouldn't be doing in someone else's EEZ.
But if the reefs are Tongan, such artifical islands are entitled to
no more than a 500m exclusion zone. However, if the semi-permanent
rocks are treated as real rocks by the Law of the Sea, they can claim
12nm territorial waters. (What if a big storm washes all the rocks
away at once? Do the territorial waters disappear overnight?) And if
these lumps of tide-rolled coral can be considered to have
an "economic life of their own", the Tongans can claim a 200nm EEZ
and encroach seriously on Fijian and New Zealand maritime claims. Not
a bad bit of bootstrapping for reefs in someone else's sea!
Grant