As far back as 1947, The Bahamas government has granted licenses for exploration within its territorial waters. In 1947 there were eight active licenses, including those held by Gulf, Standard Oil, BP, Superior Oil and Shell.
The decision to declare maritime boundaries, however, is only the beginning of the process. The Bahamas must now negotiate with the US, the UK, Cuba and Haiti to arrive at an agreed set of boundaries within which The Bahamas’ sovereignty is unchallenged.
Defence Force Captain Godfrey Rolle has been seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 12 years where he worked with the late George P. Stewart, former Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the issue of The Bahamas’ maritime borders.
Captain Rolle is the director of the National Anti-drug Secretariat, in addition to chairing the Maritime Boundaries Delimitation Committee, the multi-agency body that worked on the task. He explained that the territorial waters provision of the convention allows a country to enforce its laws.
"If you have an infraction of your immigration laws, if you have people running drugs or arms through your waters, this gives you the right to arrest any vessels, anybody who would be involved in these sorts of things within your waters, and to prosecute them," he said.
In regard to the EEZ, Captain Rolle pointed out, "We say fish, but you know in the marine environment there are a number of other things that could be of benefit to The Bahamas later on, and so it is important that we establish our rights over the area so when the time comes and the expertise is available, there might be some other things that we can benefit from. So it is important that we establish our rights and our sovereignty over those areas."
In addition to oil, he pointed out that there could also be mineral deposits and other potentially viable and valuable resources on the Bahamian seabed.
On December 11, The Bahamas formally lodged the coordinates from which its baselines are established with the UN, as per the Law of The Sea Convention. Captain Rolle explained that from the baselines, each country 12 miles outward, which is considered its territorial sea, and 200 nautical miles out from the baselines is declared the country’s exclusive economic zone.
The captain pointed out that this could only happen if there are no other countries with territorial waters or exclusive zones that impinge on the areas declared sovereign and exclusive.
"In our case, on the Atlantic side, there is no problem. We can measure from our baselines 200 miles out, and that will be our exclusive economic zone," he said.
"On the Caribbean Sea side of it, we’ve got the United States, we’ve got the Republic of Haiti and we’ve got the Republic of Cuba, and to the eastern side of us, we’ve got the Turks and Caicos."
"So we are unable to realize the full extent of our 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, and in some instances I suspect we might not be able to realize the 12-mile territorial sea," he explained.
"What the convention allows is for every country to establish those limits, and then have jurisdiction of the waters within that particular area."
Captain Rolle pointed out that the Convention says that where two countries cannot fully recognize the extent of their territorial waters, negotiations must take place.
"In every negotiation you’re going to have some give and take," he said in response to questions about the potential for those talks to be tense.
"At this point in our process, The Bahamas has just now established the coordinates and the baselines which we have deposited with the United Nations. With regards to fishing rights and all that, it is expected that questions such as those would be dealt with separate and apart from the negotiations which sets out our maritime boundaries," Capt. Rolle said.
"Of course, those negotiations will undoubtedly be delicate, and there will have to be some give and take, because international law, and the convention, allows for historic fishing rights, but there are certain things that have to be included in that."
"So the intent is for us to negotiate and ensure that all of the countries accept that we have established our baselines, and the areas that we consider to be our archipelagic waters," he said.
Australia
Another country with major maritime border issues is Australia, which shares no land borders with other nations, has 60,000 kilometres of coastline, and claims jurisdiction over a vast maritime domain. The Australian Exclusive Economic Zone is the third largest in the world (after the United States and France).
In his article on Securing Australia’s Maritime Domain, Lee Cordner – a Principal Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) – said, "Fishing is set to become increasingly important in our region, due to population growth and economic improvement in Asian countries," Mr. Cordner wrote. "Meanwhile, global and regional fish stocks are under significant stress, and the incidence of illegal fishing is predicted to increase. Enforcement tasks, then, will also expand greatly."
Caribbean
Closer to home, the issue of maritime boundaries is critical in, for example, hydrocarbon-rich Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands, which earlier this year complained about supposed infringement by the Dominican Republic.
One Trinbagonian blogger argued in the face of pending border negotiations between that country and the Grenadines – and also Barbados – and against the backdrop of lengthy processes before a similar agreement was reached with Venezuela, that there is no benefit in procrastinating when negotiating such treaties.
"On the contrary as the hydrocarbon and fishing potential of the un-delimited maritime areas are revealed and/or oil companies get involved or express an interest in future exploration, as in the Barbados case, the negotiating positions of the respective parties become inflexible and extremist," the commentator argued.
In January, the TCI government noted that the Dominican Republic had attempted to claim boundaries that infringe on Turks and Caicos maritime space—just 12 miles off the coast of Salt Cay.
TCI Minister of Natural Resources, Fisheries and the Environment McAllister Hanchell "expressed his displeasure with this new declaration by the Dominican Republic’s government."
"We believe that because of this declaration, we now have an increase of illegal fishing on our banks," Mr. Hanchell said. "For a long time now, Dominican nationals have been caught poaching in Turks and Caicos waters, and with this new boundary reach, they can ‘legally’ enter closer to our banks and fish."
The matter was sent to the UK, as the Turks and Caicos is a British Overseas Territory and the UK is responsible for the country’s international affairs.
