E. W. Seabrook Hull

Throughout written history the ocean has been a chancy source of food, a highway for trade and conquest, a battleground and a source of pleasure and recreation. It has been mostly a two-dimensional environment for which there has grown up a respectable body of law and precedent whose geopolitical significance and diplomatic utility are clearly understood. But now man is extending his reach into the third dimension, and traditional concepts of freedom of the high seas and of territorial waters are confounded by situations without precedent. Friend and foe alike join together at sea for common scientific purposes. Increasingly man is turning to the depths of the sea to meet the varied needs of his civilization ashore. International waters have become a matter of both national and private corporate interest. Conversely, private interests on and under the high seas have now become a matter of worldwide, multinational interest-as have those things that nations and individuals do along their own shorelines.