320 THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. 



instance, as a matter of equity, a half-share of the water area might be claimed by New Guinea. 

 Fortunately, owing to the prompt action taken a few years since by Dr. Mcllwraithe, on 

 behalf of Queensland, supported by the voices of the neighbouring colonies, the New Guinea 

 territory, bordering Torres Strait, has fallen within the sphere of British influence. But for this 

 astute politic step, as intricate and vexatious an international fisheries dispute as that of the 

 Behring Sea would sooner or later have inevitably arisen, with regard to Queensland's legal claim -,-, 

 to the valuable pearl and pearl-shell fisheries of her northern waters. A limitation of the 

 territorial boundary line to all depths not exceeding thirty fathoms, while leaving Queensland in 

 possession of all the pearl-shell-producing ground bordering the mainland, and around the 

 Wellesley group and other islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, would release from inclusion in 

 the existing boundary limit, as defined on page 318, an area of some 40,000 square miles in the 

 centre of the district. A similar territorial definition, applied as is here suggested to the extensive 

 pearl-shelling grounds of Western Australia, would, in a like manner, exclude from the existing 

 arbitrary boundary lines a vast area more than one hundred miles from shore, with depths of 

 from over one hundred to as much as three thousand fathoms. The limitation of absolute 

 territorial possession to the practical working depths here suggested, would, finally, deprive 

 objectors to the existing boundary limits of all reasonable cause of dissatisfaction. 



Objections to territorial jurisdiction being conceded to the Western Australian Government, 

 over what are practically the high seas, have already taken the shape of a formal appeal to Parlia- 

 ment, and may yet be the subject of international dispute. Writing, however, as the mouthpiece of 

 British subjects, by whom the appeal to Parliament was lodged, Mr. T. H. Haynes, in a pamphlet 

 entitled "International Fisheries Disputes" (Cassell & Co.), declares altogether in favour of the 

 extension of the three-mile to workable diving limits. Concerning this subject, Mr. Haynes writes : 

 "As depth regulates the responsibilities (in the direction of lighting and buoying dangers to 

 navigation), so depth should determine the advantage, by the extension of territorial rights beyond 

 the three-miles limit." And, with reference to the advantages accruing from such extension, he 

 proceeds : " Wherever the diver can reach the bottom, structures can be built up to the surface, 

 where a flag may be hoisted, forts constructed, and shelter and rendezvous for vessels provided ; 

 masonry shafts may also be erected, and coal mined from beneath the sea-bed ; nurseries 

 for fish may be established, or uses found for new marine products, only to be gathered 

 successfully by divers." Mr. Haynes concludes the section dealing with this subject with a high 

 eulogium on the magnificent gratuitous service to the shipping of the world, rendered by Queens- 

 land in the matter of lighting, beaconing, and buoying the intricate Barrier route, and for which all 

 reciprocal advantages in the direction of absolute control of the adjacent waters are, by inference, 

 most abundantly earned. 



The potentialities of the Beche-de-mer fisheries of the Great Barrier district are much akin to 

 those of pearl and pearl-shell. One of the latest of the author's official reports to the Queensland 



