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3 Int'l Bus. Law. 148 (1975)
Legal Aspects of Seabed Mineral Exploitation

handle is hein.journals/ibl3 and id is 158 raw text is: International Business Lawyer 1975, Vol. 3(ii) Printed in Great Britain Legal Aspects of Seabed Mineral Exploitation An address given by William J. Martin, Jr., San Francisco, to members of Committee 0 at the IBA Vancouver Conference 28 July - 3 August 1974 A United Nations-sponsored Law of the Sea Conference is currently underway in Caracas, Venezuela. This is the third international conference on the law of the sea, and since approximately 150 States are in attendance it is the largest international conference in history. A preliminary session of the Conference has already taken place in December, 1973, in New York City. This dealt with organizational and procedural matters. If, as seems likely, all substantive matters cannot be agreed in Caracas this summer, another session of the Conference will be'convened in Vienna next year. The result of the Conference has the potential to affect the lives of every one of us. Many vital interests are at stake. These include control of pollution in the marine environment, fisheries, extraction of such essential seabed minerals as petroleum, copper and nickel, freedom of navigation and scientific research. My comments will concern principally those aspects having to do with seabed mineral resource exploitation, but unavoidably it will be necessary to mention some other aspects now being considered at Caracas since the various law of the sea issues have a high degree of interrelationship. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND I'd like to begin from an historical perspective. Up to about 50 years ago, ocean uses were largely shipping and fishing. There was plenty of room for ships and the principal fishing involved whaling and anadronous species of fish such as salmon which spawn in fresh-water streams. Pollution of the oceans was very minor and the extraction of minerals from the seabed was virtually non-existent. The legal regime therefore was Grotius' law of the sea which allowed coastal States a territorial sea of three miles in width from shore. Within its territorial sea, including the underlying seabed and subsoil, a coastal State has virtually the same sovereignty as it enjoys over its land territory. Beyond the territorial sea the accepted doctrine was that of freedom of the seas. Over time ocean uses began to multiply and especially following World War I I attention began to focus on the oceans and seabed as a potential treasure trove of food and minerals. The traditional rules of international law or, more

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