I40 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
sion would depend very largely on how it would affect the rights and treaty 
privileges of the United States along the shores of the British Provinces, which 
possibly far more than any other factor has influenced the present firm posi- 
tion of this Government respecting a marginal belt of a marine league only.” 
Probably more important from an economic point of view than several 
miles increase in the width of the marine belt is a clear and unquestioned inter- 
national recognition of vested rights in attempts to exploit and develop defi- 
nite areas of sea bottom under the high seas, as in the cultivation of sponges, 
corals, pearl oysters, etc. There is a distinction in law as well as in fact between 
such an industry and a fishery dependent on the pursuit of free-swimming fishes 
in the ocean. Oysters, sponges, and the like represent a peculiar kind of 
property. They are not fere nature, as they do not stray, nor do they require 
taming, hence ownership may be acquired in them. 
It can not be affirmed that this extension of territorial jurisdiction to sea 
bottoms which are devoted to the cultivation of sponges, mollusks, etc., has 
ever been made the basis of any treaty or agreement, or has even been the 
subject of diplomatic discussion. With the single exception of Vattel, the 
older writers on international law were silent on this matter, and even Vattel 
seems not to have clearly distinguished it from the exercise of jurisdiction over 
migratory fishes in the seas near the marginal belt,” a doctrine which has long 
since been discredited. 
a The attitude of the United States in this matter was well expressed by Mr. Olney, when Sec- 
retary of State: “This Government would not be indisposed, should a sufficient number of maritime 
powers concur in the proposition, to take part in an endeavor to reach an accord having the force and 
effect of international law as well as of conventional regulation, by which the territorial jurisdiction 
of a state, bounded by the high seas, should henceforth extend 6 nautical miles from low-water mark, 
and at the same time providing that this 6-mile limit shall also be that of the neutral maritime zone. 
I am unable, however, to express the views of this Government upon the subject more precisely at 
the present time, in view of the important consideration to be given to the question of the effect of 
such a modification of existing international and conventional law upon the jurisdictional boundaries 
of adjacent states and the application of existing treaties in respect to the doctrine of headlands and 
bays. I need scarcely observe to you that an extension of the headland doctrine, by making terri- 
torial all bays situated within promontories 12 miles apart instead of 6, would affect bodies of water 
now deemed to be high seas and whose use is the subject of existing conventional stipulations.’ (Let- 
ter to Mr. de Weckherlin, Dutch minister, February 15, 1896. And we may also refer in this con- 
nection to the letter of Mr. Secretary Seward to the Spanish minister, quoted on p. 107.) 
b Said Vattel: “ Who can doubt that the pearl fishery of Bahren and Ceylon may not lawfully be 
enjoyed as property? And though a fishery for food appears more inexhaustible, if a nation has a 
fishery on its coasts that is particularly advantageous, and of which it may become master, shall it 
not be permitted to appropriate this natural advantage to itself, as a dependence on the country it 
possesses; and, if there are a sufficient number of fish to furnish the neighboring nations, of reserving 
to itself the great advantage it may receive from them by commerce? But if, so far from taking posses- 
sion of it, it has once acknowledged the common right of other nations to come and fish there, it can 
no longer exclude them from it; it has left that fishery in its primitive freedom, at least with respect 
to those who have been in possession of it. The English not having taken the advantage from the 
beginning of the herring fishery on their coast, it is become common to them with other nations.” 
(Vattel, Le Droit des Gens, lib. 1, ch. 23, sec. 28.) 
