Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

Using these criteria, a number of authors have made attempts to
identify the areas of the worlds oceans which, as legal continental shelf,
fall beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which territorial
limits have been determined. One of the most widely cited is Prescott’s
work of 1985, which although undoubtedly requiring some revision, is a
useful starting point for an analysis and is used here as a guide to locating
and assessing the non-living resource potential of the extended continental
shelf regions (Figure 6).
Other workers, notably Carrera (pers. comm. 2000), have
attempted to summarise the general pattern of legal continental shelf areas
for the world’s coastal nation states. It is a certainty that the final
determination of the outer limits of every coastal state’s legal continental
shelf will take a great deal of time, perhaps another decade – and will then
have to passed through the endorsement process set up by the
Commission. Even without the inevitable delays resulting from disputed
boundaries which will beset the operation, it would seem unlikely that this
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