As of my (and this video’s co-writer writer Josh’s) writing this video in August, 2021,
my most popular video is the short I made a few months ago on how many neighbors you
can say the US *actually* has. Basically in the short I talked about the US’ maritime borders,
as can be more easily seen on this world map someone evidently put in a microwave.
The responses to the video were everything from people talking about American imperialism
to saying how much the map hurt their eyes, and in particular,
“wait, what exactly are maritime borders”, and I thought I could probably make a full
video explaining what maritime borders are and how they matter in better detail… this is that video.
[This video was sponsored by Skillshare]
So, in terms of jurisdiction this is the United States, right? Wrong! You are wrong
and you should… keep on watching this video because there’s nothing wrong with
not knowing this information and we’re not here to knowledge-shame. Now sure this is the United
States, but if you go to the beach and jump off shore and swim into the water… you might drown,
but also would you no longer be in the United States? Well no you would still be in the US,
and the reason people don’t generally need to bring their passports to the beach is because of
territorial waters (the US isn’t special here by the way, I’m just using it as an example country).
Now maritime borders aren’t as cut and dry as land borders (probably mostly because they’re
in the water). You see, maritime borders have layers. First we set the baseline, set during low
tide, this is where a country’s land territory officially ends and its water territory begins.
The waters within are considered inland waters (lakes, rivers, ponds, swimming pools, etc.),
whereas everything out to 12 nautical miles from the baseline is classified as territorial sea.
Out to 24 nautical miles we get the contiguous zone, and lastly is the Exclusive Economic Zone,
extending out to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, unless two nations’ waters
overlap each-other, in which case they are either split down the middle or resolved in a treaty.
Territorial sea is basically considered sovereign territory of a particular nation,
much like its airspace, though like its airspace foreign ships (military or civilian) are generally
allowed innocent passage in most cases (yeah I meant what I said). This remains especially
true if these waters form an important corridor, like the Danish Straits for Russia or the Turkish
Straits for Russia or the Danube for a bunch of other countries. The contiguous zone is the start
of international waters, though within it a nation can still punish those who violate its laws.
Within the Exclusive Economic Zone though, a nation still has full economic control and rights,
but can’t stop other nations’ ships from entering or passing through.
Now what laws do you follow outside any country’s territorial waters or Exclusive Economic Zone?
First off, no country is allowed to claim sovereignty over any part of what the United
Nations considers the “high seas”-- basically any water more than 370.4 kilometers from any coast.
After this point, the coastal country has no exclusive rights to the water.
This doesn’t mean the high seas are lawless though; there are still rules every nation
has to abide by to make the waters a friendly place for all countries.
If you were to commit a crime at sea in national waters-- like hijacking illegal
goods or smuggling boats-- the justice system would consider that felony to have been committed
inside the country, and so you would be charged according to that country’s laws. Move about 370.4
kilometers out from the shore and leave the EEZ though, and here if you commit a crime at sea,
no country is immediately responsible; rather it comes down to which nations own the vessels,
and which countries the owners come from. In certain cases this can make prosecuting
someone very difficult since it’s hard to say “the crime was in X country, therefore X laws apply”.
There are laws and regulations on the high seas though, namely mining and fishing of protected
species. For a while the high seas have almost been a “fish whatever you want as long as it's
not an endangered fish” zone, but in 2015 the United Nations set out to enforce stricter rules
for fishing in international waters. The same goes for mining and oil extraction, in a sense since
all countries are equal, you can do what you want, but you’re also responsible for any damage caused.
So, why exactly do these borders matter? Although it largely comes down to legal aspects, maritime
borders are still vastly useful for determining other issues. You have to travel back in time to
understand why and how maritime borders came to be. Nations started to build large naval vessels
and industrialize the sea in the early twentieth century (Britain and Germany building ambitiously
large navies, you know the deal). At that time in history the laws regarding the seas were a bit of
a mess and disputes were solved on a case by case basis - often won by whoever had the bigger stick.
But as international shipping expanded, with dozens of countries industrializing and shipping
cargo and passengers around the world, rigid laws had to be set in place so no nation could overstep
a boundary. When it comes to the high seas, those are mainly determined by the United Nations,
and that works for most of the world, given that most countries are part of the United Nations.
National waters are more complex and depend on treaties between countries.
Ultimately it’s a question of how we use the waters assigned to us.
In a sense waters in a nation’s EEZ are more like that nation’s aquatic resource tiles,
places where a particular nation and only that particular nation can freely fish, navigate, and
whatever else a country might want to do within their laws but out in the sea. The lines may be
somewhat arbitrarily drawn, but they do have real effects on the wider world. One famous instance
happened a few decades ago in the Sea of Okhotsk. Russia entirely surrounds this sea, but because
everything’s huge and far apart up there, that meant it didn’t technically own the whole sea.
There was this gap, named the Peanut Hole, which was beyond Russia’s EEZ,
and which other nations exploited to gain supplies of fish in the Sea of Okhotsk, including China,
Japan, South Korea, and even Poland (the madlads, honestly). These countries did agree
to temporarily stop fishing in this area in 1993 for the pollock populations to rebound, though
eventually by 2014 the UN agreed to consider the area part of Russia’s continental shelf.
Making the seas a friendly and beneficial place for every nation all of the time is never going
to be an accomplishable feat, since there will always be a certain amount of greed and arrogance,
and a good deal of boundary disputes. The least the United Nations can do
is create a universal system for every country with access to the sea or international waterways,
and then nail down the specific laws for what you can and cannot do in each zone…
and hope everyone agrees. Yeah good luck with that!
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