[talk-au] Maritime boundaries

Darrin Smith beldin at beldin.org
Sun Jun 14 13:19:02 BST 2009


On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:59:36 -0700 (PDT)
Delta Foxtrot <delta_foxtrot at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> --- On Sun, 14/6/09, Darrin Smith <beldin at beldin.org> wrote:
> 
> > The reason I chose to put in the (roughly estimated) 12nm
> > boundary was
> > that from the research I could find it's the *legal*
> > definition of the
> > extent of full australian territory, i.e. when you are
> > inside 12nm you
> > are in Australia and all laws apply - as is the case with
> > most
> > countries from what I could determine. The 200nm is to do
> > with resource
> > exploitation and full teritorial rights do not exist in
> > this area. The
> > other countries around where world where people have added
> > maratime
> > borders and been at the 12nm limit also from what I can
> > see.
> 
> I should have read up on it first I guess, but that's only partially
> true. Since UN based conferences in the 1960s various nations have
> signed up to various international treaties, that originally went
> from 3nm, to 6nm, to 12nm and now various countries have put in
> requests for recognition to 200nm, Australia being one of them.
> 
> Exceptions in Australia's case exist where it meets territorial
> waters with PNG and they have agreements in places as to who owns
> what, and around several islands which only extend 3nm.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters
> 
> What I can't figure out is if these treaties have been ratified and
> Australia's submission for 200nm was/is accepted/valid, or what's
> going on.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters#Submissions_with_recommendations

The URL provided as a reference for all the maratime boundaries I
entered makes it pretty clear that 12nm is our territorial water
boundary, and references the Torrens Strait issue:

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/InternationalLaw_AustraliasMaritimeBoundariesandZones

I never bothered going into heavy details in Torres Straight because
getting that remotely accurate would require using maps provided by the
gov. which of course raises the ugly issue of copyright. Too hard
basket to translate all the written versions into meaninful maps, and
too much chance of offending someone who lives up that way if I got it
wrong ;)

Interestingly that page I linked lists the Exclusive Economic Zone (the
200nm case) as extending from the outside of the 12nm limit, which
would actually make it 212nm from the baseline case.

Also if someone is interested in getting the 12nm truely accurate
they'd need to look at the 'Internal Waters' cases because from some
maps I've seen around the place there are quite a few bays classified
as 'internal' which I didn't count as internal when I drew up the
lines, so the border could be further out in some areas. 

This page:

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/comlaw/legislation/LegislativeInstrument1.nsf/0/3075C0CCC553EF84CA25711400120045?OpenDocument

links to a definition of the baseline (including lon/lat points) if
anyone's really interested.

-- 

=b




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