88 



Sharp: 



Revelle : 



When I was there the most effective chief delegate was 



Elliot Richardson, who is a great man. Before that it was 



John Morton Moore, and before that it was the lawyer for the 

 State Department. ## 



— did they really take marine scientific research 

 seriously. He took it very seriously. He gave parties 

 which us oceanographers went and tried to persuade people. 

 He organized a cruise on an oceanographic ship off 

 Manhattan, where we all went. Nothing worked. 



You were on this advisory committee for the Law of the Sea 

 Conference for the State Department in '76. 



All the time, the whole time, right from the very beginning, 

 from '72 on. 



Sharp: There are a couple of letters you wrote to Richardson 



summing-up some of your ideas. I wasn't sure really what — . 



Revelle: Do you have those here? 



Sharp: Yes, I have them here. 



Revelle: Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to go over this part 

 of it very much. 



Sharp: This is his letter back to you.* It's in '77, so it's later 

 on in the discussions. [brief tape interruption] 



Revelle: The problem about the islands is that there are so many 

 islands, and no matter how small the island is, it had a 

 200-mile economic zone. 



So if you look at the South Pacific, there's 

 practically no water left in the South Pacific. It's all 

 covered by economic zones of different islands. 



The problem is less severe in the North Pacific. 



In the Atlantic, one of the islands is Rockall, which 

 is just a rock a hell of a ways off the coast of England. 

 The English claim it's an island, that they have a 200-mile 

 economic zone around it. 



Elliot was certainly right, that there was nothing you 

 could do about it, except it's a shame that islands have all 

 these economic zones. That's where most of the economic 

 zones come from, from the islands. 



What he said here, which is quite important. I'm not 

 quite sure how it turned out, and that is dispute 

 settlement. That's where he placed his hope. At least at 

 one time, whether this coastal state denied consent or not 

 was not subject to dispute settlement. It was purely 

 coastal state, what he called binding third-party 

 settlement. What that means is you have an arbitration with 

 somebody beside the two parties in dispute involved in it. 



