Sharing the Ocean Treasure

...The most dramatic breakthrough Lame m the mid-1960s, to course, with the discovery that you could take a fish seldom harvested, the hake, and grind it into a dry yet palatable meal that can be mixed with a large variety of foods Generically named Marine Protein Concentrate (map), this extract can supply practically every undernourished human being on the face of the earth with his minimum daily requirements, at a price even the poorest can afford After two years of sitting on the formula, the U S Food and Drug Administration finally put its imprimatur upon map this spring In addition to hake, of course, fresh water is potentially one of the most important sea resources Sea water also contains numerous mineral elements, of which sodium chloride in the form of salt, magnesium and bromine are being commercially extracted at the present time It is also well established that there are gold, platinum and diamond deposits in the seabed (particularly off Alaska and South Africa), as well as phosphoresce, sculpture and glauconite And just this summer scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution announced their discovery of the richest concentration of underwater ores yet to be analyzed Test borings in a "hot deep" of the Red Sea bed revealed deposits of iron, manganese, zinc, silver and gold very conservatively valued at $1 5 billion—in only one of the three known hot pools in that particular sea...

...The question of exploitation rights to these undersea resources is already pressing, however, as is the corollary problem of how to prevent man's reckless spoliation of the riches What happened in the case of the continental shelf clearly demonstrates the need for a uniform approach As soon as the enormity of the shelf's deposits was apparent, the U S government merely declared that it owned the condimental shelf contiguous to its territory and would exercise jurisdiction over the same The proclamation, issued in 1945 and known as the Truman Proclamation, carefully avoided asserting jurisdiction over the waters of the high seas above the shelf...

...Let each nation on the ocean exploit the area adjacent to its shore to a point midway between it and the nation on the opposite shore" Such a solution would be following the ownership pattern of most property abutting on streets and highways in the United States But it would exclude from the sharing all nations not bordering upon the ocean, and it would place at a great disadvantage countries like Russia with poor condimental shelves Thus, distribution would be fortuitous rather than just or moral...

...citizens, they will make adjustments with each other under international law " This point of view is best expressed by Noithcutt Ely, an international lawyer "As a practical matter, the explorer appropriates a segment of the seabed, and the jurisdiction??let us go thither and say sovereignty—of his flag attaches to the discovery This is the way sovereignty has been extended to unoccupied and unclaimed land above the seas There is no necessary inconsistency between such an exclusive appropriative right in the seabed and the inclusive rights of all nations in the use of the overlying high seas—jus as the Truman Proclamation said with respect to the continental shelf When the first significant discoveries are made, the flag nations of the sea-borne exploitation mechanisms are likely to arrive at an accommodation, just as Venezuela and Great Britain did in the Gulf of Praia ". A fishery expert, W M Chapo-nan, puts it more succinctly "We fishery people welcome the miners aboard and to the 70 per cent of the world where some freedoms and responsibilities remain We only pray that they work hard and make money and don't bother about the law ". But many fishing industry experts find the catch-as-catch-can system highly uneconomical, grossly inefficient and productive of numerous conflicts In a few cases??for example, the North Pacific fur seal treaty—somen of the big powers have joined together to restrain wasteful exploitation tin that instance Japan and Canada agreed to abstain from fishing for seals m the North Pacific, and in return, the catch is divided among Canada, Japan, Russia and the United States ) But by and large the fisheries of the world are confronted with a hodge-podge of conflicting claims We have also seen the dubious results of permitting unrestrained individual exploitation of underwater oil deposits in our own country Authorities...

...The sea, comprising 71 per cent of the earth's surface, is a world all its own It has its own circulatory system, and unlike the continents, is a continuous connected mass It has rivers, solid masses of moving water, mountains called sea mounts, and a boundless source of energy generated by the sun striking its open face...

...Admittedly, there is no legal piecedent for simply handing over an asset of this kind to the United Nations, neither was there any precedent for the Truman Proclamation There was a vacuum and Truman filled it Landmarks in law are marked by the creation of new precedent, not by blind adherence to the past...

...The extensive gas and oil reserves m the continental shelf (roughly equal in size to Africa) are a treasury in themselves which is already being tapped But even more astounding are the rich deposits of gas and oil revealed by test borings beyond the continental shelf, and to the amazement of everyone, the spectacular mineral resources contained in nodules lying on the ocean bed These peculiar lumps, 1-4 inches in diameter, measure as high as 50 per cent manganese, 2 per cent cobalt, 2 per cent nickel and 2 per cent copper It has been estimated that a single mining operation under the auspices of one company could produce enough manganese to equal the total production needs of the United States in 1963 John L Mere, an authority on oceanography, predicts "that within the next generation, the sea will be a major source of molybdenum, vanadium, lead, zinc, titanium, aluminum, zirconium and several other metals as well...

...is commercially very valuable, residential areas have sprung up on the neighboring seabed itself There is one of the newest developments, Park Royale The people you see swimming in front of their apartments are protected against sharks by an invisible electric fence, and wear a nose filter that extracts oxygen from the water...

...Sharing the Ocean Treasure By Aaron L. Danzig THE YEAR is 2067 We are leaving on the Lisbon Express, the fish-shaped tram that skims along an underwater monorail 100 feet above the continental shelf, then drops as much as 10,000 feet to the ocean floor From the window of our pres-surmised coach we see hundreds of derricks built to extract the shelf's rich reserves of oil and gas In the distance, a continuous belt car-rise freight cars to and from Europe Now the farms are coming into view Each one is fenced in by a light nylon grid and stretches for miles and miles, like the Iowa corn-fields But the harvest is a fish called hake More nutritious and cheaper than corn, it is ground up, bones and all, to provide the entire population of the earth with a protein-inch meal mixture costing a penny per person per day As we glide off the condimental shelf and descend to the ocean floor the water becomes much greener and colder, the heat m the coach must be turned up even on this warm summer day Since the shelf...

...The idea of UN ownership received enthusiastic backing at the World Peace Through Law conference in Geneva in July Declaring the high seas and their riches to be the "common heritage of all mankind," the conference, representing approximately 2,500 jurists and lawyers from over 100 countries, recommended to the General Assembly that all non-fishery resources beyond the continental shelf to any state "appertain to the United Nations " And the permanent mission of Malta to the United Nations has formally asked to have the matte included on the agenda of the General Assembly session scheduled to get under way September 25 But how long it will be before the nations of the world take some definitive action on the issue is admittedly more hazardous to predict than the potentials of undersea development during the next centric...

...Hard upon the heels of the Truman Proclamation came similar pronouncements by many other nations Chile, Ecuador and Peru went so far as to appropriate their contiguous shelves 200 miles out to sea Because of the conflicts raised by the ensuing claims, a conference was called in 1958 under the aegis of the United Nations, and the Convention to the Continental Shelf was drawn up With slight alterations, this codified into international law what the Truman Proclamation had stated unilaterally that each nation with territory bordering upon the oceans is exclusively entitled to exploit the resources of its continental shelf—dscribed as the land adjacent to the nation running to a depth of 200 meters, "or, beyond that limit, to where the depth of the superjacent waters admits of the exploitation of the natural resources ". But who, and under what circumstances, is entitled to issue a proclamation with reference to the high seas beyond the shelf The very question has provoked a long list of explosive responses...

...Park Royale is part of a large industrial complex, most of the residents work in the nearby manganese fields Without a trained eye, it is difficult to spot those glinting nodules that cover millions of square miles of the ocean floor and are loaded with manganese, cobalt, nickel and copper Enough there to give us all a life of ease You may remember the controversy which raged back in 1967 about who should own all this wealth Some people said it should be preserved for all mankind Others favored opening the territory—jus like the Old West—anod every man for himself...

...Let us go back now to the year 1967 Our incursions into the depths are to submarine transportation what Kitty Hawk was to aviation, but the "Lisbon Express" and "Park Royale" are already foreseeable Indeed, even wilder dreams surround the limitless treasure at the ocean's bottom...

...Let things alone and as each country, or its citizens, exploits various areas and comes into conflict with other countries or their...

...Is the UN capable of exploiting this limitless wealth efficiently and aggressively...

...The exploitation to these deep sea resources lies many decades in the future In 1967 it is much cheaper and more efficient to exploit the continental shelf alone True, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Day Dock Company in Virginia did patent an underwater mining ship this August for collecting nodules, but no one would say when it will be operational Nor does anyone seem to have yet figured the cost of refining manganese from the nodules??not to mention the other less prevalent metals...

...Let each nation stake its claim and exploit any area over which it can assert jurisdiction" This approach would seem to give the treasury of the seas to the technologically and militarily advanced nations Military strength would appear to be vital, in fact, since the ability to exercise jurisdiction over a portion of the globe is more power-based than skill-based...

...There would seem to be little doubt that if the countries of the world could agree upon such a course, title to the bed of the sea and its resources could be vested m the United Nations The UN is an international legal personality with a specific legal identity It owns properties, is an employer, operates a post office and, as long ago as 1949 in the Bernadotte case, was given the prerogative by the International Court of Justice to sue for damages suffered by it or its employs In addition, the UN is specifically committed to "the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples " It maintains a vast network of technical assistance programs crisscrossing more than 100 countries for these purposes Exploitation of the ocean treasury would easily fit with and add resources to these programs...

...Above all, President Johnson argued in July 1966 at the Washington Navy Yard "We must be careful to avoid a run to grab and hold the lands under the high seas We must be sure that the deep seas and ocean bottoms are, and remain, the legacy of all " The President's approach presupposes that all nations and peoples, regardless of geographical location, continental shelf, natural resources or other endowments, should and can share m the wealth of the sea Opponents sniff that this suggestion, like most idealistic suggestions, is impractical How are we all to own and share the riches to the sea9 And more to the point, is there any authority sufficiently skilled and sufficiently aggressive to disperse the benefits of this hidden wealth...

...Easily, proponents of this approach contend, noting that two of the most efficient internaltonal financial organizations the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, happen to be UN agencies Individual entrepicneurs with the necessary ingenuity and know-how could be called upon to exploit the sea, while the United Nations would hold the title Appropriate leases, easements or exploitation rights would be let out on a competitive basis to those best able to take advantage of them, with residual royalties, rents or taxes enduring to the benefit of the United Nations The funds thus delved would be channeled by the Genial Assembly to diverse international programs As a matter of fact, this is precisely the manner in which the United States government exploits its continental shelf...

...Scientists at first theorized that there could be no life below a certain depth because of the cold and darkness But the oceans have their secret formulae There is life all the way down, though there are deserts, too, void of all life (True to his pattern, man is adding to the undersea deserts with atomic waste and oil pollution ) Not until the mid-19th century did oceanography emerge as a science, and even then research was largely confined to sea currents and biological specimens In the 20th century, searching for food to nourish the chronically hungry, scientists began to experiment with algae and plankton, sea plants that grow in wild profusion...

...have had to impose stringent depletion quotas to prevent any one owner from pumping more than his share out of the common pool...