THE INADEQUACY OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 697 



connected with the bottom, such as oysters, pearl-oysters, and 

 coral, which are found in shallow water, as a rule, and usually 

 near the coast, have always been considered as on a different 

 footing from fisheries for floating fish. They may be very 

 valuable, are generally restricted in extent, and are admittedly 

 capable of being exhausted or destroyed ; and they are looked 

 upon rather as belonging to the soil or bed of the sea than to 

 the sea itself. This is recognised in municipal law, and inter- 

 national law also recognises in certain cases a claim to such 

 fisheries when they extend along the soil under the sea beyond 

 the ordinary territorial limit. Cases in point are the pearl- 

 fisheries on the banks in the Gulf of Manar, Ceylon, which 

 extend from six to twenty-one miles from the coast, and are 

 subject to a colonial Act of 1811, which authorises the seizure 

 and condemnation of any boat found within the limits of the 

 pearl-banks, or hovering near them : boats or vessels navigating 

 the inner passage are prohibited from hovering or anchoring 

 in water deeper than four fathoms, and those navigating the 

 outer passage from hovering or anchoring within twelve 

 fathoms. These pearl-fisheries are very valuable, and have 

 been treated from time immemorial by the successive rulers of 

 the island as subjects of property and jurisdiction ; and the 

 laws referred to apply also to foreigners. Another case is the 

 pearl-fisheries in Australia. In Western Australia certain Acts 

 are applied far beyond the three-mile limit, though apparently 

 only against British subjects, 1 and a similar Act, of 1888, 

 applied in Queensland to extra - territorial waters west of 

 Torres Strait. The pearl-fisheries of Mexico and Columbia are 

 also subject to regulation beyond the ordinary three-mile limit. 

 Examples of extra-territorial jurisdiction over beds of the 

 common edible oyster are to be found in the British conven- 

 tions with France in 1839 and 1867, by which the Bay of 

 Granville was reserved to France (see p. 612), and in the last 

 of these conventions (Article ix.) a close-time was provided 

 in the English Channel ; and likewise in the proceedings 

 concerning the Arklow and Wexford banks, off the Irish coast 

 (see p. 621). Coral-beds in the Mediterranean, off the coasts 

 of Algeria, Sardinia, and Sicily, are in a similar way regulated 



1 The Western Australian Pearl and Beche-de-mer Fishery (Extra-Territorial) 

 Act, 1889. 



