CHAPTER IV 



THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS 



Apart altogether from the questions of the regula- 

 tion of times and methods of fishing, there is the 

 matter of the police supervision of fishermen and 

 fishing boats at sea, and this has been a fruitful 

 subject of legislation. If good order had to be 

 maintained among, and disputes settled between, 

 fishermen of the same nationality, this would still 

 be a task of great difficulty ; but when these things 

 relate to the fishermen of several countries working 

 on the same area, it becomes much more difficult. 

 The exclusive jurisdiction of a country over the sea 

 adjacent to its coasts extends only to a distance of 

 three miles from low-water tide-marks. Within 

 these territorial limits its subjects possess the sole 

 right of fishing, and foreign fishing boats, though 

 they enter under stress of weather and other cir- 

 cumstances, may not exercise any method of 

 fishing. The theory of the " three-mile limit " 

 was that a country had control over the sea only 

 as far as a shot from a cannon could carry. This 



