fabian tract 437 
sea use planning 


Elizabeth Young 1 introduction 1 
Elizabeth Young 2 structure of government 3 
Hance Smith 3 the nature and uses 

of the sea £ 
Peter Fricke 4 maritime research 1] 
Robin Grove-White 5 sea use planning and 

consultation 2~ 
Vaughan Lowe 6 the law 2j 
Elizabeth Young, Peter 7 the civil power at sea 3~ 
Fricke 
Elizabeth Young 8 postcript: recommendations 3f 


this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Societ} 
represents not the collective view of the Society but only th 
views of the individuals who prepared it. The responsibility c 
the Society is limited to approving publications it issue 
as worthy of consideration within the Labour movemen 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 H 981' 
November 1975 ISBN 7163 0437 


1. introduction 
.f\ 
~ 21 r2-'7 s·Elizabeth Young 
16t 
ffhe ~uture of Britain now depends on struck the public notice. However, the 
the success or failure of our efforts in the shorrfaH in qualified technicians, the crisis 
North Sea. Fail, and we are banloupt; in the fishing industry, the a!bsence of 
succeed, and :general success becomes fundamental research on North Sea con-
possible again. ditions, the failure to control sea traffic, 
n this pamphlet, we are feeling our waytowards a quite new and quite unfamiliar 
concept-that df sea use planning as a 
necessary !function of Government. It is 
valid a -concept, we be'lieve, as the con-
cept of land us-e planning, and .the need 
Jfor its application in any particular seas 
·s proportionate to the scale, the multi-
plicity and the importance of the uses that 
are being made o'f them. For Britain, ·bydefinition, the matter is of unparalleled 
urgency. 
The seas around the British Isles are not 
only the most heavil.y used in the world, 
but our nationa1 solvency now depends on 
the right use, allocation and exploitation 
df 'the resources to be found in them. It 
is remarkable that there has never yet been 
any serious examination by any British 
Government of what this seawards ex-
pansion means for us-nationaUy, region-
ally ·or in .the international context. (In1974, the Labour Party NEe's Interna'tion-
a:l Committee set up a working group to 
report on the law df the sea-a directive 
being comprehensively interpreted.) 
As was argued in an earlier Fabian pam-
phlet (Elizabeth Young and Brian John-
son, The Law of the Sea, 1973), the Con-
servative Government was then approach-
Jng the 1974 UN Conference on the Law 
. of the Sea with aims at once anachron-
istic and unexamined. On the internation-
al side, there has •been a steady-if slow 
-improvement since the ar.rival of the 
Labour Government in 1974, !but on the 
domestic maritime front, there continues 
a ·kind of optimistic heedlessness, a pipe-
dream that " when the oil begins to flow " 
it wHl restore to us our rightful rate of 
growth and aU will be welt 
The dream is mis'taken. Tt is entirely with-
in our capa!bility to spoil the North Sea 
and to squander its resources, rich as they 
are, through lack of forethought and 
lack of planning. Deaths in the North 
Sea of divers has, not surprisingly, 
the very possibility that difficulties over 
funding might ·curtail the Hydrographer 
·of the navy's work at the very moment 
when his entirely civilian product-ac-
curate charts-becomes every day more 
important ; aU these raise the question-
what icebergs of administrative mal-
adjustment are they the tip of ? 
In the fo1lowing essays, we can only 
pose a few questions concerning the 
machinery of government: law, inform-
ation and research, consultation, decision 
making, enforcement. Our single argu-
ment is that if the framework of govern-
ment is too wrong or too feeble, policy 
will fail, ·even within the areas alreadyunder British jurisdiction. But there is 
little dou'bt that within the next few years, 
either by internationa'l agreement or byunilateral or regional decision, 200 nautic-
al mile zones (EEzs) will be esta,blished 
within which the coastal state will have 
exclusive rights to the exploitation of the 
economic resources: the scale of our 
problems wiH be multiplied. 
There are several sets of reasons whyBritain's maritime policy needs planning: 
(a) the accelerating multiplicity of uses 
that Britain already can and does make 
of the seas around will lead to destructive 
conflict unless there is machinery where-
by an the innumera'b1e interests involved 
may 'be weighed, ordered, and reconciled . 
•Priorities have to be set and by definition 
the machinery that sets them has to be 
able to command and use research and 
be geared to movements of ·opinion-
local, national and international. This 
would !be justification enough for sea use 
planning ibut (b) in the international field, 
Britain finds herself one of the principalmaritime powers, with substantJial ship-
ping interests and heavily dependent on 
the unimpeded seas for the carriage of 
food, raw materials, manufactured goods 
and oil. Yet simultaneously Britain is a 
coastal state, increasingly dependent on 
her own adjacent waters and sea floor 
for food, energy (in the form of hydro-
1. introduction 
.f\ 
~ 21 r2-'7 s·Elizabeth Young 
16t 
ffhe ~uture of Britain now depends on struck the public notice. However, the 
the success or failure of our efforts in the shorrfaH in qualified technicians, the crisis 
North Sea. Fail, and we are banloupt; in the fishing industry, the a!bsence of 
succeed, and :general success becomes fundamental research on North Sea con-
possible again. ditions, the failure to control sea traffic, 
n this pamphlet, we are feeling our waytowards a quite new and quite unfamiliar 
concept-that df sea use planning as a 
necessary !function of Government. It is 
valid a -concept, we be'lieve, as the con-
cept of land us-e planning, and .the need 
Jfor its application in any particular seas 
·s proportionate to the scale, the multi-
plicity and the importance of the uses that 
are being made o'f them. For Britain, ·bydefinition, the matter is of unparalleled 
urgency. 
The seas around the British Isles are not 
only the most heavil.y used in the world, 
but our nationa1 solvency now depends on 
the right use, allocation and exploitation 
df 'the resources to be found in them. It 
is remarkable that there has never yet been 
any serious examination by any British 
Government of what this seawards ex-
pansion means for us-nationaUy, region-
ally ·or in .the international context. (In1974, the Labour Party NEe's Interna'tion-
a:l Committee set up a working group to 
report on the law df the sea-a directive 
being comprehensively interpreted.) 
As was argued in an earlier Fabian pam-
phlet (Elizabeth Young and Brian John-
son, The Law of the Sea, 1973), the Con-
servative Government was then approach-
Jng the 1974 UN Conference on the Law 
. of the Sea with aims at once anachron-
istic and unexamined. On the internation-
al side, there has •been a steady-if slow 
-improvement since the ar.rival of the 
Labour Government in 1974, !but on the 
domestic maritime front, there continues 
a ·kind of optimistic heedlessness, a pipe-
dream that " when the oil begins to flow " 
it wHl restore to us our rightful rate of 
growth and aU will be welt 
The dream is mis'taken. Tt is entirely with-
in our capa!bility to spoil the North Sea 
and to squander its resources, rich as they 
are, through lack of forethought and 
lack of planning. Deaths in the North 
Sea of divers has, not surprisingly, 
the very possibility that difficulties over 
funding might ·curtail the Hydrographer 
·of the navy's work at the very moment 
when his entirely civilian product-ac-
curate charts-becomes every day more 
important ; aU these raise the question-
what icebergs of administrative mal-
adjustment are they the tip of ? 
In the fo1lowing essays, we can only 
pose a few questions concerning the 
machinery of government: law, inform-
ation and research, consultation, decision 
making, enforcement. Our single argu-
ment is that if the framework of govern-
ment is too wrong or too feeble, policy 
will fail, ·even within the areas alreadyunder British jurisdiction. But there is 
little dou'bt that within the next few years, 
either by internationa'l agreement or byunilateral or regional decision, 200 nautic-
al mile zones (EEzs) will be esta,blished 
within which the coastal state will have 
exclusive rights to the exploitation of the 
economic resources: the scale of our 
problems wiH be multiplied. 
There are several sets of reasons whyBritain's maritime policy needs planning: 
(a) the accelerating multiplicity of uses 
that Britain already can and does make 
of the seas around will lead to destructive 
conflict unless there is machinery where-
by an the innumera'b1e interests involved 
may 'be weighed, ordered, and reconciled . 
•Priorities have to be set and by definition 
the machinery that sets them has to be 
able to command and use research and 
be geared to movements of ·opinion-
local, national and international. This 
would !be justification enough for sea use 
planning ibut (b) in the international field, 
Britain finds herself one of the principalmaritime powers, with substantJial ship-
ping interests and heavily dependent on 
the unimpeded seas for the carriage of 
food, raw materials, manufactured goods 
and oil. Yet simultaneously Britain is a 
coastal state, increasingly dependent on 
her own adjacent waters and sea floor 
for food, energy (in the form of hydro-

·carbons), aggregates (.for the building industry), 
waste disposal, cooling-waters, 
recreation and for non-provocative defence. 
Only when the whole gamut of 
national interests are weighed, conflicts 
reconciled and priorities set, can Britain 
determine her actual internationa'l interests, 
and formulate and pursue an 
appropriate policy ·On the international 
stage (particularly in the now on-goingThird United Nations Conference on the 
Law of the Sea, UNCLOS Ill). Moreover 

(c) at sea, national, unilaterally enforcible 
law operates within a framework of international 
non-enforcible, conventiona;llaw, 
a framework which constantly requires 
updating, 'but whose more inert supporters 
can oniy be needled into accepting change 
by the possibility of unilateral action. 
Where UNCLOS III is deadlocked, only 
the threat of unilateral action and of the 
awesome chaos that would follow it, can 
jolt the beneficiaries of the anachronistic 
and unjust status quo into new agreement. 
Britain's effectiveness as a negotiator in 
UNCLOS depends directly on our havingproperly developed maritime effectiveness 
at home--and that depends on our 
having an effective system of sea use 
planning. 
Our national situation has no precedentand no parallel. Sea use planning will be 
a technique of government that, for 
better or for worse, will be developed in 
Britain before it is developed elsewhere. 
There is no substitute in this field for 
hard thinking. (The problem is now coming 
to the attention of the international 
community-see the two United Nations 
Economic and Social Council studies on 
marine questions: Uses of the Sea 
E5660, 30 April 1975; and Coastal Are~ 
Management and Development, E5648, 8 
May 1975. See also Elizabeth Young and 
Ritchie Calder [editors], Quiet Enjoyment: 
Arms Control and Police Forces 
for the Ocean, Royal University of Malta 
Press, 1971 ; Elizabeth Young, "To 
Guard the Sea", Forei~n Affairs, October 
1971 ; and M. M. Sibthorp [editor], 

The North Sea: Challenge and Opportunity, 
Europa Publications, 1975.) 

!hls i~ a collection of individual essays 
1n wh1ch the central topic-the govern


ment of offshore Britain-is examined 
.from various angles and in various lights. 
They have been prompted by our grow.
ing concern, each in his or her own field, 
over what is-or rather, is not-happening 
and by our shared conviction that 
planning the use of Britain's seas has now • 
·become essential to the country's wellbeing. 
Moreover, we do not believe that 
a Labour Government can need muoh 
persuading that planning the use of the 
nation's resources at sea is in the interest · 
of all of us, or that it should begin immediately. 
· 

a 
s 
d 
tl 

1 

I 

ll 

II 


2. structure of government 
Elizabeth Young 
" In the enquiries which followed it was 
clearly shown that the evil was in reality 
.that worst of all evils-one which has 
been caused by nothing in particular and 
for which no-one in particular is to 
·blame" (Lytton Strachey, "Florence 
Nightingale ", Eminent Victorians, Chatto 
and Windus, 1918). 
If things go wrong in Britain's move into 
the great offshore (and they are certainly 
not yet going nearly right enough) the 
explanation will be that one-the evil 
will not have been caused by anything in 
particular, and no-one in particular will 
be to blame. Except, of course, for sins 
of omission. 
The purpose of this pamphlet is to in-
sert the phrase, sea use planning, into 
the British political vocabulary. We do 
not propose to define the concept, which 
is new, but rather to draw attention to 
the consequences of its absence as a 
mode of thinking about offshore develop-
ments. Sea use planning, we believe, is 
a necessary intellectual tool, which will 
allow the British people and Government 
to seize hold of some of the problems 
that so far have been too slippery, have 
fallen between stools, have escaped notice, 
or have turned into nine ·because of one 
stitch not taken a few years ago. 
In recommending this new concept, we 
are in effect claiming that there has been 
a total change in the nature and scale of 
the uses that Britain is making of the 
seas around her and that a similar change 
is required in our approach to them. 
Instead of thinking of them, as Grotius 
'did in the early seventeenth century, as 
incapable of " appropriation " or of 
"exhaustion by promiscuous use", we 
are suggesting that they must now be 
recognised as limited, in the same wayas land is limited. The seas are vulnerable 
to misuse, like the land, and therefore in 
as great need of effective administration. 
use of the multiplicity of competi-
tive, and potentially damaging, uses, sea 
use now needs to he ordered and con-
trolled in the same sort of way as we 
have found land use has to be ordered 
and controlled-rhat is, in the interests 
o~f the community as a whole, those of 
us who are alive today as well as those 
who will be here in the future. 
Offshore " government " in Britain now 
takes place by way of the consensus of a 
large number of standing and ad hoc 
committees, most of them of officials 
f.rom the many Whitehall departmentsconcerned, a few of ministers. Executive 
responsibility is spread throughout the 
Cabinet and throughout Whitehall (and 
Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast). If half a 
million square kilometres had suddenly 
been added to .the United Kingdom'smodest land area, a study of the require-
ments for an administrative infrastructure 
would have 'begun instantly. The planning 
inquiry into the third London Airport 
cost one and a quarter million pounds, 
but there has never been any equivalent 
comprehensive enquiry concerning the de-
velopment of the North Sea. In the post-
Rothschild situation, there have been in-
numerable " customers " for individual 
maritime research projects (see chapter 
four) hut never a customer for an overall 
survey of maritime policy. There are 
rumours that the Prime Minister's Office 
is studying the matter, but no details 
have percolated to the outside world. 
It bas often 'been noticed that the British 
civil servant will go on doing what he 
was last told to do by his political masters, 
until they tell him to do somethingdifferent. It is also known that he abhors 
hypothetical questions and that manyministers have come to share this ab-
horrence. Consequently any existingsystem, particularly if it is on a largescale and incorporates many familiar 
practices and bailiwicks, tends to develop 
a momentum of its own, regardless of 
its insufficiencies. This has happened with 
maritime policy. The fact that forward 
planning depends entirely on the careful 
framing of hypothetical questions, and 
on envisaging problems before they arise, 
has carried little weight. 
It has, apparently, so far fallen to no-one 
inside the Government machine to exam-
ine the present structure of Government 
to see if it enables us adequately to (a) 
administer the seas around us, (b) develop 
2. structure of government 
Elizabeth Young 
" In the enquiries which followed it was 
clearly shown that the evil was in reality 
.that worst of all evils-one which has 
been caused by nothing in particular and 
for which no-one in particular is to 
·blame" (Lytton Strachey, "Florence 
Nightingale ", Eminent Victorians, Chatto 
and Windus, 1918). 
If things go wrong in Britain's move into 
the great offshore (and they are certainly 
not yet going nearly right enough) the 
explanation will be that one-the evil 
will not have been caused by anything in 
particular, and no-one in particular will 
be to blame. Except, of course, for sins 
of omission. 
The purpose of this pamphlet is to in-
sert the phrase, sea use planning, into 
the British political vocabulary. We do 
not propose to define the concept, which 
is new, but rather to draw attention to 
the consequences of its absence as a 
mode of thinking about offshore develop-
ments. Sea use planning, we believe, is 
a necessary intellectual tool, which will 
allow the British people and Government 
to seize hold of some of the problems 
that so far have been too slippery, have 
fallen between stools, have escaped notice, 
or have turned into nine ·because of one 
stitch not taken a few years ago. 
In recommending this new concept, we 
are in effect claiming that there has been 
a total change in the nature and scale of 
the uses that Britain is making of the 
seas around her and that a similar change 
is required in our approach to them. 
Instead of thinking of them, as Grotius 
'did in the early seventeenth century, as 
incapable of " appropriation " or of 
"exhaustion by promiscuous use", we 
are suggesting that they must now be 
recognised as limited, in the same wayas land is limited. The seas are vulnerable 
to misuse, like the land, and therefore in 
as great need of effective administration. 
use of the multiplicity of competi-
tive, and potentially damaging, uses, sea 
use now needs to he ordered and con-
trolled in the same sort of way as we 
have found land use has to be ordered 
and controlled-rhat is, in the interests 
o~f the community as a whole, those of 
us who are alive today as well as those 
who will be here in the future. 
Offshore " government " in Britain now 
takes place by way of the consensus of a 
large number of standing and ad hoc 
committees, most of them of officials 
f.rom the many Whitehall departmentsconcerned, a few of ministers. Executive 
responsibility is spread throughout the 
Cabinet and throughout Whitehall (and 
Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast). If half a 
million square kilometres had suddenly 
been added to .the United Kingdom'smodest land area, a study of the require-
ments for an administrative infrastructure 
would have 'begun instantly. The planning 
inquiry into the third London Airport 
cost one and a quarter million pounds, 
but there has never been any equivalent 
comprehensive enquiry concerning the de-
velopment of the North Sea. In the post-
Rothschild situation, there have been in-
numerable " customers " for individual 
maritime research projects (see chapter 
four) hut never a customer for an overall 
survey of maritime policy. There are 
rumours that the Prime Minister's Office 
is studying the matter, but no details 
have percolated to the outside world. 
It bas often 'been noticed that the British 
civil servant will go on doing what he 
was last told to do by his political masters, 
until they tell him to do somethingdifferent. It is also known that he abhors 
hypothetical questions and that manyministers have come to share this ab-
horrence. Consequently any existingsystem, particularly if it is on a largescale and incorporates many familiar 
practices and bailiwicks, tends to develop 
a momentum of its own, regardless of 
its insufficiencies. This has happened with 
maritime policy. The fact that forward 
planning depends entirely on the careful 
framing of hypothetical questions, and 
on envisaging problems before they arise, 
has carried little weight. 
It has, apparently, so far fallen to no-one 
inside the Government machine to exam-
ine the present structure of Government 
to see if it enables us adequately to (a) 
administer the seas around us, (b) develop 

4 
an appropriate external maritime policy 
and (c) contribute effectively to UNCLOS 
III. (Britruin was one of the countries 
which ·contributed most constructively 
to an earlier UNCLOS in 1958, but the Con-
servative Government's preparations for 
the conference which was to open in 1974 
were miniscule. David Ennals, as Minister 
of State at the Foreign Office, has been 
manfully struggling to make a si1k purse 
·out of a very small pig's ·ear.) These are 
matters involving poljtical value judge-
ments of the highest order. Appropriate 
policy cannot-and has not-come out 
of the existing committee arrangements. 
A web :of hierarchical and interpenetrat-
ing committees (standing committees, ad 
hoc committees, ministerial committees) 
now stands substitute for a system. The 
majority of Government departments are 
involved in some way in maritime affairs, 
and each is jealous of its preserve and 
vigorous in pursuit of its own policy.
Vertical communication within depart-
ments may be working successfully ; 
horizontal communication between them 
is not. In Whitehall, at least 21 Govern-
ment departments and offices are involved 
in maritime affairs (the Ministry of Agri-
·culture and Fisheries [MAFF], the Cabinet 
Office, the Civil Service Department, the 
Crown Estates Commissioners, the Min-
istry of Defence, the Department of Edu-
·cation and Science, the Department of 
Employment, the Department of Energy,
the Department of the Environment, the 
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the 
Department of Health and Social Security, 
the Home Office, the Department of In-
dustry, the Northern Ireland Office, the 
Ministry of Overseas Development, the 
·Privy Council, the Scottish Office, the De-
partment of Agriculture and Fisheries for 
Scotland [nAPs], the Department of 
Trade, the Treasury, .the Welsh Office,
the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
and others). 
Within and between these departments,
it is estimated that there are well over a 
hundred ma;ritime research and policygroups, working parties and investigative 
'Sections. Moreover the British Govern-
ment is a member of 27 inter-govern-
mental and United Nations 'bodies having 
to do with the sea (including the Inter-
governmental Maritin1e Consultative 
Organisation, IMCO). 
In addition to this massive, if dispersed, 
Government sector, there are several 
major industries involved, includingnationalised and private companies, num-
bering several hundred-if not more than 
a thousand. At the !last count, there were 
some 30 :learned societies and professionalinstitutions, tens of associations of 
business organisations (for example the 
General Council of British Shipping and 
the British TrawJer Federation) and tens 
of organisations of an international but 
non-governmental nature. Increasingly,
the trade union movement, both national 
and international •(the International Trans-
port Workers' Federation for instance) is 
active in maritime affairs. There are also 
voluntary bodies, with the Royal Nation-
al Lifeboat Institution fulfilling an im-
portant national function, and groupings 
of amenity and recreational interests, each 
of .them with a fully legitimate concern · 
in British maritime poHcy. 
What there is not, is any system ·for order-
ing overall priorities. The Doctrine of the 
Open Seas still prevails in the establish-
ment psyche and it seems somehow to be 
felt impious to subject the wHd and in-
constant element that is the sea to the 
mean ·bridle of planning. But slowly it is 
losing ground and the pity is only that its 
disappearance did not precede the start-
ing up of North Sea development. 
Moreover, at present no m[nister is politi-
c..tlly responsible for making his colleagues 
recognise that the unity of the maritime 
·environment is a fact of life and that it is 
vulnerable to misuse. The Department of 
Energy's remit remains " to identify and 
to seek to remove obstacles and difficul-
ties which may impede the landing of oil 
and gas on time " which, dangerously, 
suggests that other maritime interests may 
safe'ly ·be ignored, over-ruled or sacrificed. 
Yet in the long run, fish (a renewable 
resource) may weH be more important to 
the country than oil which will be ex-
hausted in a few decades. Nevertheless, 
there is no minister politicaHy responsible 
for judging ·between, say, the short term 
4 
an appropriate external maritime policy 
and (c) contribute effectively to UNCLOS 
III. (Britruin was one of the countries 
which ·contributed most constructively 
to an earlier UNCLOS in 1958, but the Con-
servative Government's preparations for 
the conference which was to open in 1974 
were miniscule. David Ennals, as Minister 
of State at the Foreign Office, has been 
manfully struggling to make a si1k purse 
·out of a very small pig's ·ear.) These are 
matters involving poljtical value judge-
ments of the highest order. Appropriate 
policy cannot-and has not-come out 
of the existing committee arrangements. 
A web :of hierarchical and interpenetrat-
ing committees (standing committees, ad 
hoc committees, ministerial committees) 
now stands substitute for a system. The 
majority of Government departments are 
involved in some way in maritime affairs, 
and each is jealous of its preserve and 
vigorous in pursuit of its own policy.
Vertical communication within depart-
ments may be working successfully ; 
horizontal communication between them 
is not. In Whitehall, at least 21 Govern-
ment departments and offices are involved 
in maritime affairs (the Ministry of Agri-
·culture and Fisheries [MAFF], the Cabinet 
Office, the Civil Service Department, the 
Crown Estates Commissioners, the Min-
istry of Defence, the Department of Edu-
·cation and Science, the Department of 
Employment, the Department of Energy,
the Department of the Environment, the 
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the 
Department of Health and Social Security, 
the Home Office, the Department of In-
dustry, the Northern Ireland Office, the 
Ministry of Overseas Development, the 
·Privy Council, the Scottish Office, the De-
partment of Agriculture and Fisheries for 
Scotland [nAPs], the Department of 
Trade, the Treasury, .the Welsh Office,
the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
and others). 
Within and between these departments,
it is estimated that there are well over a 
hundred ma;ritime research and policygroups, working parties and investigative 
'Sections. Moreover the British Govern-
ment is a member of 27 inter-govern-
mental and United Nations 'bodies having 
to do with the sea (including the Inter-
governmental Maritin1e Consultative 
Organisation, IMCO). 
In addition to this massive, if dispersed, 
Government sector, there are several 
major industries involved, includingnationalised and private companies, num-
bering several hundred-if not more than 
a thousand. At the !last count, there were 
some 30 :learned societies and professionalinstitutions, tens of associations of 
business organisations (for example the 
General Council of British Shipping and 
the British TrawJer Federation) and tens 
of organisations of an international but 
non-governmental nature. Increasingly,
the trade union movement, both national 
and international •(the International Trans-
port Workers' Federation for instance) is 
active in maritime affairs. There are also 
voluntary bodies, with the Royal Nation-
al Lifeboat Institution fulfilling an im-
portant national function, and groupings 
of amenity and recreational interests, each 
of .them with a fully legitimate concern · 
in British maritime poHcy. 
What there is not, is any system ·for order-
ing overall priorities. The Doctrine of the 
Open Seas still prevails in the establish-
ment psyche and it seems somehow to be 
felt impious to subject the wHd and in-
constant element that is the sea to the 
mean ·bridle of planning. But slowly it is 
losing ground and the pity is only that its 
disappearance did not precede the start-
ing up of North Sea development. 
Moreover, at present no m[nister is politi-
c..tlly responsible for making his colleagues 
recognise that the unity of the maritime 
·environment is a fact of life and that it is 
vulnerable to misuse. The Department of 
Energy's remit remains " to identify and 
to seek to remove obstacles and difficul-
ties which may impede the landing of oil 
and gas on time " which, dangerously, 
suggests that other maritime interests may 
safe'ly ·be ignored, over-ruled or sacrificed. 
Yet in the long run, fish (a renewable 
resource) may weH be more important to 
the country than oil which will be ex-
hausted in a few decades. Nevertheless, 
there is no minister politicaHy responsible 
for judging ·between, say, the short term 

Jnterests of the oil industry, and the long 
term interests of the fishing industry; or 
between the interests of the shipping industry 
in freedom of navigation and of 
loca:l authoribies, inshore fishermen, of 
fishfarmers and "amenity" groups in 
controlling pollution and traffic at sea ; 
tbetween the interests of the oil companies 
and of trade unionists in reducing flags·
of-convenience shipping; between the 
Foreign Office's concern for the main.. 
tenance of international law, and the 
necessity of the conservation of fish 
stocks in the North Atlantic. At present,
such differences are reconciled in official 
·committees or, at worst, in Cabinet or 
. Cabinet committees where poHtical clout 

· and a chop for a chop may wel'l count 
for more than do the underlying realities 
<>f appropriate sea use. 

Again-and it is the same problem-
there is no minister politically responsible 
for overseeing maritime research as a 
whole, for coordinating it, identifying and 
plugging gaps, for developing a recognisable 
maritime research strategy (see 
·chapter four). No minister is responsiblerfor the organisation of education and 
training for the new sea-going industries 
and services, let a·lone for the as yetunrecognised discipline of sea use planning. 
No minister is respons,ible for the 
state of the law in genera·l, for ensuring 
that parliamentary time is found to consolidate 
the present haphazard patchwork, 
or to ·bring it up to date where it is 
damagingly anachronistic or an outrightimpediment to development-as it is to 
fish-farming (see chapter six). 

In 1970, the Law Commission had putforward proposals for tidying up United 
Kingdom law relating to the "maritime 
zone" but they have still not been implemented 
and have now been overtaken 
by events. Fish farmers are told to wait 
for the Layfield Committee on rating to 
report before their rating conundrum can 
be deared up. 

No minister (at the time of writing) has 
been able to seize the initiative in the 
matter of funding the Hydrographer of 
the navy, a:lthough the problem has been 
expected for years. There has been no 

knocking together of departmenta:l heads 
and it has still not been pointed out to 
the Treasury that there can be no question 
of the money not being found. If a sea 
rate must be devised to finance this and 
other sea use related public services, so 
be it, and let Lord Kaldor be asked to 
start thinking. But meanwhile the money 
must be kept flowing because, as William 
the Conqueror knew maps and lists are 
the bedrock of government-as well as 
in this case, essential for all of the seafaring 
trades, industries and services. 

This particular situation has arisen because 
no minister has been responsiblefor searching out and plugging loopholes 
in the inherited system of administration. 
There has been-and will continue to be 
-a series of smaH and less small crises,
which develop because farseeing them 
has been no minister's responsibility and 
the committee system so positively discourages 
the raising of hypotheticalquestions, especially when the answers 
threaten to be either expensive or inconvenient 
or both. 

Diving safety, safety of service vessels, 
medical treatment offshore, fire fighting, 
traffic management, " refuse " collection,
employers' liability, various gaps in basic 
research, the fishing industry crisis-an 
are foreseeable crises being dealt with by 
patchwork solutions, and scarcely a 
month goes by without another responsi · 
bility gap appearing, and another patch 
hastily being applied. The a:bsence of 
structural performance monitoring, and a 
shortage of skilled workers may be the 
next troubles that could have been foreseen 
and prepared against. Or it may be 
that an ill navigated flag-of-convenience 
tanker runs into an iU lit or ill buoyed 
·oil installation. 

What then should be done? The first requirement 
is the deliberate allocation of 
overall political responsibility. This means 
a single (and senior) minister, certainly a 
member of the Cabinet, with responsibility 
for the well 'being of the British 
seas and for planning and for deciding 
priorities in the uses that are made of 
the seas. He should not be responsible 
for making use of them. Those responsi



tbilities would remain more or less where 
they now are: fisheries with MAFF 
(Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries)
and DAFS (Department of Agriculture and 
Fisheries for Scotland) ; oil extraction 
with the Department of Energy ; the regulation 
of shipping with the Department 
of Trade and so on. Some rationalisation 
would be needed, some major hivings off 
might wel'l be possible, but several of the 
present licensing and regulatory functions 
would have to move to the new office. 
But these decisions should await the new 
minister's arrival. One of his first labours 
should be to plan and set up the administrative 
machinery that is required. Not 
only is it not now to hand, it bas not yet 
been invented. 

If a Minister for Maritime Affairs were 
appointed, his functions would in part'be analogous .to the planning functions of 
the Secretary of State for the Environment. 
The intending user would apply for 
permission either :to a Sea Use Planning 
Agency or direct to the Minister (seechapter five). If there was a conflict of 
interests, or wide public concern, the 
Minister could order a pu'blic enquiry, 
as the Secretary of State for the Environment 
does. The problem of " dient " industries 
and their patron ministers would 
be no different from what it is on iand. 
(It is someWhat invidious for the Secretary 
of State for Energy to decide between 
oil, which it is his duty to promote, and 
fish, which it is not. This is the arrangement 
iikely to 'be set up under the 
Petroleum and Submarine Pipelines Bill 
now before parliament. The fishing industry 
fears some kind of maritime strip-
mining.) 

The Secretary of State for the Environment 
already sits in judgement on his 
colleagues' proposals when the Government 
departments themselves act as land 
developers. There would ·be nothing constitutionally 
iniquitous in the Minister 
responsible for sea use planning doing 
the same thing for the offshore: actingin accordance with these familiar procedures, 
taking account of the relevant interests 
within a widely researched, generally 
agreed and regularly updated " sea 
use map ", or " maritime structure plan ", 

exactly as extensive as British jurisdiction 
is extensive. 

The main differences 'between land and 
sea account for the main differences between 
land use planning and sea use 
planning. The land has one surface only, 
at the familiar and reliable interface of 
air and soil ; although air moves, and 
water percolates through both air and 
so.H, most land uses are stationary: .the 
house, the factory ·chimney, the motorway, 
the ·water basin. At sea, things are 
not so simple: two interfaces and three 
volumes are in constant interaction and 
often one use will not preclude another. 
Moreover the structures with which 
people go to sea, and :by means of which 
they use it, float, sink, anchor, break 
loose, may travel on either of the two 
surfaces and in any of .the three volumes ; 
penneating substances move imperceptibly 
from one to the other. This fluidity and 
interpenetration of uses does not make 
planning either impossible or unnecessary 
-on the contrary~but it makes enforcement 
a constant, instead of an occasional, 
concommitant o'f planning. The Minister 
responsible for sea use planning, unlike 
his land use colleague, ·cannot rest in the 
happy conviction that what he has planned 
will stay planned. For the seas, the planning 
function itself will require continuous, 
day to day, enforcement (see chapter 
seven). 

The new Minister must not only perform 
sea use planning and devise maritime 
policy. He must in effect . design the 
discipline of sea use planning and see to 
the development of a corps of sea use 
planning inspectors, parallel in !function 
to those already advising the Secretary of 
State for the Environment ; he must 
promote the new profession academically 
and in industry and in local and central 
government genernlly. He should set up 
a permanent long term study group to 
look after the sea use map, in terms of 
which sea use planning decisions will be 
taken. He must certainly marshall existing 
government funded maritime research. 
He must have a research policy 
unit of his own, conducted by his chief 
scientific adviser, to advise him on research 
funding and his must be the princi



· pat 4 
' customer " department, groupingand spending the greater part (not all) 
:of the presently scattered maritime re-
, search 'funds. He must develop, in co-
operation with other dep~rtments and 
ioca:l authorities, an education and train-
ing policy in the light of anticipatedmaritime needs. Furthermore, the Min-
ister must take in hand the up-dating 
and improvement of sea related domestic 
1aw, in the light of the eventual extension 
of national limits. If u port state " juris-
diction is added to 4 
' flag state " juris-
diction over maritime offences, he must 
develop a role as major prosecutor of 
non-British sea 'borne malefactors-per-
petrators of pollution, owners o'f sub-
standard vessels, employers who trans-
gress internationailly accepted safetystandards. He must develop Britain's sea 
use relations with other sea using states. 
Regional cooperation in the management 
of the North Sea will be particularly im-
portant. There is not only the European 
Common Fisheries policy to 1be remade, 
but a long list of activities where common 
regulations and shared enforcement pro-
cedures will in aH senses of cost be cost 
effective.(The regionally coordinated func-
tions might eventually come to include: 
fishery management and protection ; fire-
fighting arrangements; oily residues col-
lection ; communications ; accident re-
porting ; search and rescue services ; 
regulation for p'ipe iine routing and pipe-
line safety; safety, health and welfare in 
installations and their service vessels ; 
diving ; certification and insurance ; traffic 
control ; pollution control ; routing ·of 
dangerous cargoes ; and so on-includingline safety ; safety, health and welfare in 
matters affecting large scale sea use plan-
ning, such as the construction of artifioial 
islands.) 
. Diplomatic problems are certain to arise: 
as the various North Atlantic states estab-
•lish fishery mana~ement schemes in their 
EEZS '(Exclusive Economic Zones), it is 
clear that, on conservation grounds, there 
will be a very substantial reduction over-
aU 'in the amount of fishing allowed to 
non-coastal, distant water, fishing fleets. 
The Soviet Union which deploys by far 
the largest distant water fishing fleet in 
lhe world, and which does not submit 
7 
itself to the controls accepted by most 
·other fishing state members of the North 
East AHantic Fisheries Commission, has 
recently been taking nearly three million 
tonnes of fish :from the North Atlantic 
(well over twice the total British catch 
and nearly one fifth of the total for the 
area). If an unpleasant dispute about the 
necessary phasing down of Soviet fishing 
effort in the North West European Seas 
is to be avoided, it will ~be necessary for 
the coastal states to display the utmost 
solidarity amongst themselves and also 
to muster the factual information about 
fish stocks, and fishing effort and practi-
ces. There must 1be no repeat of the 
scientifically ill founded arguments ad-
vanced during the British negotiations 
·over cod with Iceland in 1972. 
Given that dvil servants are mostlyconvinced that to set up a whole new 
ministry would be disproportionatelycostly in terms of dislocation and dis-
orientation, given too that the quota of 
secretaries of state is full and the Cabinet 
quite big enough, it seems more fruitful 
to suggest that the new responsibilitiesshould be entrusted to an existingminister. First thoughts suggest that they 
should go to the Secretary of State for 
the Environment. He already has plann-
ing duties and planning expertise, and 
woU'ld merely have them added to. But 
his is also an enormously extensive de-
partment and it is not certain that he 
could, properly, make the time to create 
and to work so complex and manyfingered an animal as an executive and 
quasi-judicial office of sea use planning. 
Further thought suggests the Home Secre-
tary. He is already responsible for " law 
and order ", for the maintenance, on land, 
of the Queen's Peace. Sea use planning, 
includes, quite essentially, the continuous 
enforcement o·f its own provisions. Some 
of the enforcement will take place on 
[and-where it is cheaper-but some will 
necessarily take place on, in, under, and 
over the sea. (At sea regulatory functions 
are now scattered among a variety of 
departments, and statutory bodies, as 
shown in ·chapter seven.) But to keep the 
·regulatory, planning and policing func-
tions separate would be needlessly costly. 
· pat 4 
' customer " department, groupingand spending the greater part (not all) 
:of the presently scattered maritime re-
, search 'funds. He must develop, in co-
operation with other dep~rtments and 
ioca:l authorities, an education and train-
ing policy in the light of anticipatedmaritime needs. Furthermore, the Min-
ister must take in hand the up-dating 
and improvement of sea related domestic 
1aw, in the light of the eventual extension 
of national limits. If u port state " juris-
diction is added to 4 
' flag state " juris-
diction over maritime offences, he must 
develop a role as major prosecutor of 
non-British sea 'borne malefactors-per-
petrators of pollution, owners o'f sub-
standard vessels, employers who trans-
gress internationailly accepted safetystandards. He must develop Britain's sea 
use relations with other sea using states. 
Regional cooperation in the management 
of the North Sea will be particularly im-
portant. There is not only the European 
Common Fisheries policy to 1be remade, 
but a long list of activities where common 
regulations and shared enforcement pro-
cedures will in aH senses of cost be cost 
effective.(The regionally coordinated func-
tions might eventually come to include: 
fishery management and protection ; fire-
fighting arrangements; oily residues col-
lection ; communications ; accident re-
porting ; search and rescue services ; 
regulation for p'ipe iine routing and pipe-
line safety; safety, health and welfare in 
installations and their service vessels ; 
diving ; certification and insurance ; traffic 
control ; pollution control ; routing ·of 
dangerous cargoes ; and so on-includingline safety ; safety, health and welfare in 
matters affecting large scale sea use plan-
ning, such as the construction of artifioial 
islands.) 
. Diplomatic problems are certain to arise: 
as the various North Atlantic states estab-
•lish fishery mana~ement schemes in their 
EEZS '(Exclusive Economic Zones), it is 
clear that, on conservation grounds, there 
will be a very substantial reduction over-
aU 'in the amount of fishing allowed to 
non-coastal, distant water, fishing fleets. 
The Soviet Union which deploys by far 
the largest distant water fishing fleet in 
lhe world, and which does not submit 
7 
itself to the controls accepted by most 
·other fishing state members of the North 
East AHantic Fisheries Commission, has 
recently been taking nearly three million 
tonnes of fish :from the North Atlantic 
(well over twice the total British catch 
and nearly one fifth of the total for the 
area). If an unpleasant dispute about the 
necessary phasing down of Soviet fishing 
effort in the North West European Seas 
is to be avoided, it will ~be necessary for 
the coastal states to display the utmost 
solidarity amongst themselves and also 
to muster the factual information about 
fish stocks, and fishing effort and practi-
ces. There must 1be no repeat of the 
scientifically ill founded arguments ad-
vanced during the British negotiations 
·over cod with Iceland in 1972. 
Given that dvil servants are mostlyconvinced that to set up a whole new 
ministry would be disproportionatelycostly in terms of dislocation and dis-
orientation, given too that the quota of 
secretaries of state is full and the Cabinet 
quite big enough, it seems more fruitful 
to suggest that the new responsibilitiesshould be entrusted to an existingminister. First thoughts suggest that they 
should go to the Secretary of State for 
the Environment. He already has plann-
ing duties and planning expertise, and 
woU'ld merely have them added to. But 
his is also an enormously extensive de-
partment and it is not certain that he 
could, properly, make the time to create 
and to work so complex and manyfingered an animal as an executive and 
quasi-judicial office of sea use planning. 
Further thought suggests the Home Secre-
tary. He is already responsible for " law 
and order ", for the maintenance, on land, 
of the Queen's Peace. Sea use planning, 
includes, quite essentially, the continuous 
enforcement o·f its own provisions. Some 
of the enforcement will take place on 
[and-where it is cheaper-but some will 
necessarily take place on, in, under, and 
over the sea. (At sea regulatory functions 
are now scattered among a variety of 
departments, and statutory bodies, as 
shown in ·chapter seven.) But to keep the 
·regulatory, planning and policing func-
tions separate would be needlessly costly. 

To run them together into one specialised, 
sea going force has much to be said for 
it, and only the Home Secretary has the 
appropriate policing powers. If this were 
done, the Secretary of State for Home 
Affairs would become Secretary of State 
for Home and Maritime Affairs. 

Are these suggestions not all very expensive? 
No attempt can here be made 
to cost them, partly because no-one knows 
what is spent now, and anyway much of 
the expenditure and much of the value 
received cannot be put in money terms. 
Effective Government, orderly progress, 
mistakes avoided, resources well used, 
communities protected, accidents and 
waste prevented, are aH imponderable.
The risks now being taken-research not 
done, surveys not made, materials not 
tested, ·work force not qualified, services 
not provided, regulations not made-are 
·equally imponderable, but certainly extremely 
expensive. Against some risks it 
is possible-and normal-to insure, and 
the premium, related as it is to the value 
of what is insured, to the nature of the 
risks, and to the experience of the insurance 
market of the field, gives a useful 
measure of the cost of the risks. But the 
risks that are now being taken with the 
national dowry at sea are not insurable, 
and until there is a responsible minister, 
there is no-one to weigh the imponder


ables and to decide what should be spent 
on avoiding the risks and how it should 
be raised. 

Implicit in all landlord and tenant law, 
there is an undertaking by the landlord 
to secure the " quiet enjoyment " of his 
rights to the tenant. It is this, in the form 
of " the Queen's Peace", that Government 
must now provide for all those 
who are legitimately conducting their 
business-and ours-in British seas. Perhaps 
a sea rate would make sense, to 
finance the infrastructure of government

at sea : what is certain is that we cannot 
afford any longer to do without the 
infrastructure. 


3. the nature and uses 
of the sea 
Hance Smith 
One of the principal functions of the 
current Law of the Sea Conference is 
to draw boundary lines on maps and 
charts of the oceans, but " as soon as 
boundary lines are formulated tfor the 
oceans, a value has ·been set on the marine 
· environment and ' sea use ' becomes as 
significant as land use " (Kenneth Walton, 
" A geographer's view of the sea'",
Scottish Geographical Magazine, volume 
90, 1974). This paraHel with iand use is 
valua:ble but while land use can be dis-
cussed in terms of the two dimensional 
surface of the earth, sea use must be con-
sidered in three dimensions : there are two 
surfaces, the sea surface and the sea bed ; 
there is the body of water; and there is 
the atmosphere a:bove and the rocks be-
neath the sea. Then there are two distinct 
aspects to the maritime environment: its 
own components as an entity and the 
interactions (economic, social, :biological 
and physical) between these components 
and man in the coastal zone, on the sea 
surface and on the sea floor. 
The mass of ocean water is used by 
man primarily for fishing and for waste 
disposal as well as for submarine mili-
tary transport. The tides generated in it 
have also been used to a limited ·extent 
for electricity generation. The oceans 
are also the home .of a vast new :tech-
nology -ocearnology or ocean engin-
eering -which aims at ena~bling man 
to survive under water for prolongedperiods and to perform all kinds o.f 
tasks, particularly those connected with 
mineral exploitation, on and beneath the 
sea floor. The offshore engineering of the 
North Sea oil industry which has be-
come a major new s·ector of British 
industry is one such development.
The atmosphere above the sea and the 
rocks below it are chiefly important for 
certain interactions. For example, the 
atmospheric properties of heat trans-
mission and movement (winds) are 
largely responsible for oceanic weather 
patterns and .for extending oceanic in-
fluences over the weather of adiacent 
land areas. Most atmospheric moisture 
originates from ·the sea surface. Winds 
are the driving force of oceanic circu-
lation which is an essential factor in 
the sustenance of ocean life. Tidal and 
other currents in the oceans assist in the 
deposition of vast quantities of sediment 
from the land and from decaying ocean 
life on the sea floor. 
The value of the rocks under the sea 
floor, with important exceptions, is lim-
ited to the continental shelves which 
contain the wide range .of ores .found on 
land. At present, by far the most valu-
able sea bed resource is petroleum in 
the ,form 'both of crude ·oil and of natural 
gas. From the sea floor, sand and gravel 
are extracted in the coastal zone from 
shallow areas immediately offshore, and 
certain metaliferous ores exist in con-
centration in particular localities, such 
as the famous ·but little exploited man-
ganese nodules on the deep ocean floors. 
Further, certain bottom deposits, especi-
ally those ·of a sandy nature in relatively 
shallow seas are particularly suitable for 
benthonic life which many commercial 
fish species depend on for food. These 
areas of " soft bottom " are importantfishing grounds. 
The main use of the sea surface is for 
movement -for trade, naval deploy-
ment and recreation, and for the move-
ments of the " resource exploiters ",
fishing craft and those engaged in mineral 
exploitation. Sea surface characteristics 
are cJosely governed by atmospheric con-
ditions, particularly winds and temper-
ature, the former producing waves and 
ocean currents. The action of solar radi-
ation and of the atmosphere on the sea 
surface .govern the production of plank-
ton upon which all marine life ultimately 
depends for survival. 
The coastal zone, the narrow area of sea 
immediately adjacent .to the land, is 
under the most pressure from men. Its 
main uses include harbour building and 
dredging for navigational purposes ; it is 
a source of sand and gravel ; it is the 
immediate area of waste disposal and 
consequently subject to the heaviest pol-
lution ; it is also used for various kinds 
of rather danger·ous recreation. Problems 
of intensive competition between uses are 
aggravated by unpredictable changes in 
weather and sea conditions, by strongtides and by rivers discharging vam am-
3. the nature and uses 
of the sea 
Hance Smith 
One of the principal functions of the 
current Law of the Sea Conference is 
to draw boundary lines on maps and 
charts of the oceans, but " as soon as 
boundary lines are formulated tfor the 
oceans, a value has ·been set on the marine 
· environment and ' sea use ' becomes as 
significant as land use " (Kenneth Walton, 
" A geographer's view of the sea'",
Scottish Geographical Magazine, volume 
90, 1974). This paraHel with iand use is 
valua:ble but while land use can be dis-
cussed in terms of the two dimensional 
surface of the earth, sea use must be con-
sidered in three dimensions : there are two 
surfaces, the sea surface and the sea bed ; 
there is the body of water; and there is 
the atmosphere a:bove and the rocks be-
neath the sea. Then there are two distinct 
aspects to the maritime environment: its 
own components as an entity and the 
interactions (economic, social, :biological 
and physical) between these components 
and man in the coastal zone, on the sea 
surface and on the sea floor. 
The mass of ocean water is used by 
man primarily for fishing and for waste 
disposal as well as for submarine mili-
tary transport. The tides generated in it 
have also been used to a limited ·extent 
for electricity generation. The oceans 
are also the home .of a vast new :tech-
nology -ocearnology or ocean engin-
eering -which aims at ena~bling man 
to survive under water for prolongedperiods and to perform all kinds o.f 
tasks, particularly those connected with 
mineral exploitation, on and beneath the 
sea floor. The offshore engineering of the 
North Sea oil industry which has be-
come a major new s·ector of British 
industry is one such development.
The atmosphere above the sea and the 
rocks below it are chiefly important for 
certain interactions. For example, the 
atmospheric properties of heat trans-
mission and movement (winds) are 
largely responsible for oceanic weather 
patterns and .for extending oceanic in-
fluences over the weather of adiacent 
land areas. Most atmospheric moisture 
originates from ·the sea surface. Winds 
are the driving force of oceanic circu-
lation which is an essential factor in 
the sustenance of ocean life. Tidal and 
other currents in the oceans assist in the 
deposition of vast quantities of sediment 
from the land and from decaying ocean 
life on the sea floor. 
The value of the rocks under the sea 
floor, with important exceptions, is lim-
ited to the continental shelves which 
contain the wide range .of ores .found on 
land. At present, by far the most valu-
able sea bed resource is petroleum in 
the ,form 'both of crude ·oil and of natural 
gas. From the sea floor, sand and gravel 
are extracted in the coastal zone from 
shallow areas immediately offshore, and 
certain metaliferous ores exist in con-
centration in particular localities, such 
as the famous ·but little exploited man-
ganese nodules on the deep ocean floors. 
Further, certain bottom deposits, especi-
ally those ·of a sandy nature in relatively 
shallow seas are particularly suitable for 
benthonic life which many commercial 
fish species depend on for food. These 
areas of " soft bottom " are importantfishing grounds. 
The main use of the sea surface is for 
movement -for trade, naval deploy-
ment and recreation, and for the move-
ments of the " resource exploiters ",
fishing craft and those engaged in mineral 
exploitation. Sea surface characteristics 
are cJosely governed by atmospheric con-
ditions, particularly winds and temper-
ature, the former producing waves and 
ocean currents. The action of solar radi-
ation and of the atmosphere on the sea 
surface .govern the production of plank-
ton upon which all marine life ultimately 
depends for survival. 
The coastal zone, the narrow area of sea 
immediately adjacent .to the land, is 
under the most pressure from men. Its 
main uses include harbour building and 
dredging for navigational purposes ; it is 
a source of sand and gravel ; it is the 
immediate area of waste disposal and 
consequently subject to the heaviest pol-
lution ; it is also used for various kinds 
of rather danger·ous recreation. Problems 
of intensive competition between uses are 
aggravated by unpredictable changes in 
weather and sea conditions, by strongtides and by rivers discharging vam am-

ounts of frequently polluted fresh water 
and sand and silt eroded from the land. 
Immediately beyond the coastal zone is 
where most fishing now takes place. 

The ocean waters are the sustainer of a 
vast web of life, from plankton to sea 
birds. Despite British preoccupation with 
off-shore oil resources, the fisheries constitute 
a resource many times more valuable 
in the long run than offshore mineral 
resources are likely to be. (Even on 
a world scale, the well-head value of offshore 
oil and gas was barely half the 
value of the fisheries in the late 1960s). 
This is essentially becaus·e biological resources 
are renewable relative to the 
human life span and most mineral resources 
are not. 

fisheries 

Relationships among the forms of life in 
the sea can be visualised as an indivisible 
pyramid. At the base of this pyramid is 
the ocean water itself, containing life supporting 
chemicals such as oxygen, carbon 
dioxide and mineral salts. The lowest 
level of life is the phytoplankton, minute 
plants which convert these nutrients into 
energy by the process of photosynthesis.
Above these are the microscopic zoo-
plankton which feed both on the phytoplankton 
and upon each other. Beyondthese are several levels of larger animals 
mainly fish, some species of which feed 
on plankton and some on other fish. At 
the peak of the pyramid are weH known 
predators, of which whales, sharks and 
seabirds are the most familiar. These 
several trophic levels a·re linked by numerous 
food chains which interact to produce 
a complex food web of relationships, 
analagous to the system of plantand animal life on land, but more complex 
in detail. 

As with any other pyramid, the higher 
the level, the smaller the base of supoort,
hence the greater the vulnerability. Thus, 
paradoxically enough, the predators are 
at greatest risk from imbalances in the 
system. 

The impact of man on the ecosystem of 

marine li'fe has up to now primarily taken 
the form of exploitation rather than 
management, concentrating upon certain 
important types of fish and upon some 
predators, notably whales, which have 
been virtually exterminated by hunting. 
Lower levels of life in the ocean have 
apparently been little affected until recently, 
and in practice, the oceanic ecosystem 
has proved to be remarkably flexible 
under the impact of man, capable of 
many adjustments. But permanent imbalance 
results if too much exploitationtakes place : overfishing, like some varieties 
of pollution, is a permanent imbalance, 
changing a resource from a renewable 
into a non-renewable one. 

Serious local over fishing is a·lready widespread. 
Effective control will depend on 
regulating the ecosystem where the fish 
are, which means for a start on all the 
continental shelves. Two sorts of resource . 
management are immediately apparent, 
distinguishable by the degree of control 
that it is possible to exert: open sea fishing 
or " hunting " at one extreme, fish 
farming at the other. 

In open sea fisheries, a system of con·
straints is slowly materialising. The 
methods of control include regulation of 
catching gear, catch quotas specified byspecies and national shares, close seasons 
and declaration of a series of limits,
ranging from closing waters completely 
to all fishing, to subjecting areas to a 
variety of regulations based uoon typesof boat and gear permitted. Fish farming 
is limited to coastal areas and fresh 
water lakes and rivers, and to fish which 
spend at least part of their lives in fresh 
water-for example, salmon and trout. 
Only the plaice among sea fishes has been 
extensively farmed, although pisciculture 
based uoon other species is wide-. 
soread in China and Japan. Large scale 
farming of the two main groups of open 
sea fish which form the basis of most 
fisheries-pelagic and demersal-seems 
unlikely, at least in the near and forseeable 
future. 

For Britain. by far the most importantdemersal fish is cod (though haddock, 


' \ : , . . .. . .. ....2000' 0-~ ,' 
' ,,·-•• Norwegian / sea 0o ..... • 
' ~···--1000-,'... 2,0 0 .. ... -.... .... ... _ 1 , ' 
,' ', \ ,~ 
,..., ___ , ,.-,_ ...,-~ , '...... ,.,. . ·--· 200 •• _. ·-::-::-: -JCELAND_... : ,................ \ 
0 ---------' ..... ' tC>O ...... __ ... , ..... --' ' ~ ... ,... ' 
, _, 
..I---... -...... \ 
' ' ' • -, ( Q~tit''~!!,f3_9E,ISLANDS t,\ ,./ . I 
I 
... ... -........ ,. 
, , 2()00, • 
I 
I 
I 
I 
_...... 
?.ooo 
8 
...--· 
~-
!? I 
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whiting and various fiat fish are also important). 
The herring is by far the most 
important pelagic (surface feeding) fish. 

(There are two major groups of herring : 
the Atlanta-Scandinavian to the north 
and west of the British Isles, and the 
North Sea herring. The stock of the latter 
is on the ooint of collapse, due to industrial 
overfishing using the purse-net ; 
the Scottish West Coast [or Minch] fishery 
is in considera1ble danger for the 
same reason.) 

British distant and middle water trawling 
is based primarily on cod. Decimation 
of stocks around British coasts 
before World War I led to a pattern of 
fishing based upon Faroese, Icelandic 
and Arctic grounds. These grounds too 
are now endangered. The inshore fishery. 
limited to home waters (but not territo·rial 
limits) is dependent upon a wider variety 
of demersal types, of which haddock and 
flat fish are especially ·important. It has 
been in constant conflict with the trawlinginterests over the question of grounds. 

While the conflict has recently focused 
on the international dispute between 
Britain and Iceland, in reality the damage 
has been as great or greater within 
British waters. (The only real success of 
the inshore fishermen in this contest was 
the banning of trawling in the Moray 
Firth in the 1920s). 

One important consideration must be 
environmental economics : in the pastten years, there has been an enormous upsurge 
in industrial fishing (near surface 
on a huge scale, using sma11 mesh nets), 
notably in the north east Atlantic. One 
third to one half of the total world fish 
catch is now being converted to fish 
meal and oil, used in livestock feed and 
fertilizers. Apart from delivering a final 
blow to the North Sea herring stock, industrial 
fishing is now making significant 
inroads on small, immature fish of 
all kinds, and even on sand eels, upon 
which commercial fish species feed. To 
abstract life in this way from the upper 
reaches of the sea pyramid and apply the 
product to the upper reaches of the land 
pyramid must be Cl!bout the most in


flationary 9evice yet invented in the field 
of " environmental economics " -an 
exercise not merely crazy, but positively 
frightening. 

minerals 

By far the most important useful minerals 
in the sea are in fact salt (common 
salt, sodium chloride) and fresh water. 
Salt production from the sea is, of course,
immemorial, but the production of largequantities of fresh water by desalination 
is a relatively modem phenomenon, although 
part of the same chemical process 
of evaporation used to obtain salt. 
Desalination is likely to be of increasingimportance, especially along hot, dry 
coasts in the maritime tradewind belts 
adjacent to the world's deserts. The onlyother two minerals commercially extracted 
on a large scale are bromine (the 
sea is the chief source) and magnesium. 
·Finally, a mineral which is likely to have 
great long term significance is deuterium 
oxide (heavy water) which can be extracted 
from sea water for use in nuclear 
power generation. This is likely to be the 
ocean's most im·nortant role in energygeneration in the long run and to outstrip 
direct utilisation of tidal power. 

The phenomenon of waste disposal is 
only mentioned here to emphasise the indivisi.
ble nature of the oceanic ecosystem. 
Pollution, like overfishing, is another 
manifestation of severe imbalance within 
the ecosystem. There is an important distinction 
between degradable .products,
mainly organic waste which is naturallyibroken down and utilised by ocean life, 
and non-degradable waste, such as radioactive 
compounds from military operations 
and research, heavy metal residues 
from industrial processes, and organictoxins from agricultural pesticides. Substances 
such as strontium-90, mercury,
and DDT, even in minute quantities, are 
as harmful to oceanic life as to terrestrial 
life. 

With the notruble exception of sand and 
gravel which can be regarded as a renewa.
ble resource in some localities due 
to its high rate of deposition, the mineral 


resources of the sea floor form at such 
a slow rate that they must be regarded 
as non-renewable. (Minerals under the 
seafloor are generally some hundred mi!lion 
years old.) 

Sand and gravel dredged from navigational 
channels and other nearshore 
areas are in faot by far the most import·
ant sea floor mineral resource (they are 
used extensively in land reclamation 
schemes and in the building and the civil 
engineering industries, especially in the 
UK. and us) but public attention has tended 

• 
·to focus upon certain exotic metalliferous 
-ores which exist in concentrated form, 
particularly -on the manganese nodules, 
widespread on the deep ocean floors 
which contain manganese, together with 
small quantities of nickel, colbalt and 
copper. 

Coal, ores of iron, nickel, copper and tin, 
and limestone have long been mined 
underneath the sea from mines originating 
-on the adjacent land, but today by far the 
most important mineral extracted from beneath 
the sea bed is petroleum. About one 
fifth of the world's crude oil and natural 
gas is currently produced from the continental 
shelves, and the proportion is increasing. 
Its importance for Britain needs 
no emphasis. There are probably four 
large sedimentary rock provinces within 
200 nautical miles of the British coast the 
likely zone of " exclusive economic 
exploitation " to be set up by UNCLOS III. 
One of these, the North Sea, is already 
partly proved as a major petroleum bearing 
region. It is a vast area of sedimentation 
containing several subsidiary basin 
structures. In the southern basjn, substantial 
accumulations of gas have been encountered 
which now provide approximately 
15 per cent of UK. energy requirements. 
Large quantities of oil together 
with a few major gas fields have been 

discovered in the other two majo~r basins, 
1in the Central N-orth Sea basin and East 
Shetland basin ; the Moray Firth basin 
also looks promising. 

So do the other three sedimentary provinces 
but geophysical exploration is less 
advanced than in the North Sea, and relatively 
Httle ·explor~tion drilling has yet 

taken place. The first of these provinces 
extends under the western portion of the 
continental shelf to the west of the British 
Isles, and sedimentary rocks extend 
downwards over the continental slopeand into the Rockall Trough and Parae-
Shetland Channel. Apar.t from exploration 
drilling west of Shetland, little has 
·been undertaken beyond seismic surveys. 
The waters beyond the shelf edge are in 
any case too deep for exploration without 
technological advances in offshore engineering. 
The same is true of the third area, 
consisting of the Rockall Plateau, which 
is a detached fragment of continental 
shelf formerly joined to the main shelf 
west of Scotland. The fourth major province, 
extending from southern Ireland to 
north west France with extension into 
the Irish Sea and English Channel, is 
promising geologically as well as beingcapable of exploitation with existing technology 
developed for the North Sea. 

The Bri.t~ish offshore oil industry is developing 
in an extremely hazardous envir-
onment. Apart from bad weather, many 
engineering problems stem directly from 
the nature of the maritime environment. 
These include the influence of wave patterns 
and of water depths and terriperat~ 
ures on structures, and on diving and 
underwater working. The sea bed characteristics 
are very variable, with substantial 
areas of shifting sand and mud 
both underlain by clay as well as rock 
near coasts, which makes for complexproblems in the instaliation of platformsand pipelines. 

transportation 

Apart from fishing and mineral extraction, 
these seas are of cardinal importance 
to Britain as the main means of 
movement in interna;tional trade, in .military 
affairs and in recreation. Traffic must 
be distinguished between the traditional 
" ho-me trade " of the merchant service 
in coastal and " short sea " areas on the 
one hand, and " foreign going " in the 
open ocean on the other. In the former, 
heavily used trade routes converging on 
major ports compete with fisheries off all 
heavily populated coasts. On occasion, 


these areas also include important offshore 
petroleum exploitation zones, as in 
the North Sea. In the North Sea dredging 
is of increasing importance as supplies of 
sand and gravel ·on land diminish. Conflicts 
(and accidents) involving all three 
(or four) uses are bound to occur. Recre~
tional use in intense form tends to be 
located in esturial areas and other enclosed 
waters or off sandy seas suitable 
for sailing which are close to main merchant 
traffic routes. Military mo¥ements 
pose similar traffic problems but usually 
only result in serious sea use conflicts 
with fisheries and amenity interests in 
coastal areas where bases and weapons 
testing ranges are located. 

Hazards in the use of the sea as a highway 
are posed by bad weather, strong 
currents (usually tidal or estuarine), and 
underwater obstacles (especially offshore 
rocks, shifting sandbanks and wrecks).
People out sailing, often with little experience 
of the sea, are particularly vulneraJble. 
Dangers are compounded in busyshipping lanes (especially the EnglishChannel) and although serious merchant 
shipping accidents may be relatively rare 
in terms of traffic flows, they result in that 
" semi-degradable " product, the shipwreck. 
The chaos which can occur is exemplified 
by the multiple wrecking ·on the 
Varne Sands some years ago. 

sea use conflicts and 
management 


The various subsystems of the maritime 
environment and of sea use all interact to 
form a complex whole. Just as in the 
formulation of regional policy on land,
sea use problems can be examined regionally, 
distinctive combinations of uses 
posing special problems. 

The first set of criteria for assessingregional aspects of s·ea use must be 
·environmental: the basic division between 
the continental shelf areas and the ocean 
deeps. By far the gr.eatest amount of 
aotivity takes place on the shelf. The 
second set of criteria concern the interests 
involved: the nature of political,
economic and social organisations which 
use the sea. The political dimension is 

all-encompassing, because the nation is 
still the unit of maritime jurisdiction. Not 
all Britain's sea boundaries are yetdrawn -those with the Republic of 
Ireland, France and Belgium -and from 
this fact international conflict may arise. 
But forms of economic organisation also 
give rise to conflicts of interest, especially 
as between corporate and non -corporate 

•forms -of economic organisation in resource 
utilis~tion, for example in the conflict 
between inshore fishing based upon 
family and small firm ownership, and 
trawling which is mainly organised on a 
company basis (some companies forming 
part of enormous corporations) with fishermen 
as paid employees. (The battles of 
inshore fishermen to safeguard inshore 
grounds have almost always been unsuccessful, 
a situation which must be 
changed if stocks are to be conserved.)
Mineral resource exploration, whether 
state or privately ·owned, seems likely to 
be organised along corporate lines because 
of the enormous financial and technological 
investment involved. Like corporate 
fishing, but more short term, it is likely to 
be in continual conflict with the maritime 
communities in which it is s-ituated unless 
special arrangements (such as Zetland 
County Council Act 1974) are made and 
enforced. 
In social organisation the contrast is between 
the large coastal urban area characteristic 
of lowland Europe (notablyaround the southern shores ·of the North 
Sea) and the relatively small coastal community 
-town or village -which is 
essentially rural in outlook and is typical 
·of northern and western Britain and 
much of Scandinavia. The primary uses 
of the sea by large port and other coastal 
cities are for navigation channels and 
for waste disposal, coupled o£ten with extens
·ive extraction of sea floor deposits. 
Large Uf\ban populations demandingcoastal recreation also impose enormous 
s·trains upon adjacent coastal communities. 
(In nineteenth century Britain, 
most of the pressure was sucessfully ab-
sof\bed by the establishment of the greatseaside reso·rts such as Brighton and 
Blackpool, each linked to a large ccmurbation 
; but today's affluent m1iddle classes 
seek more sophisticated enjoyment, and 


thus affect the smaller coastal towns and 
villages). Waste disposal is liable to interfere 
seriously with recreation in areas 
near to the industrial contributions. Further, 
rural coastal areas are often dependent 
upon fishing, their 'economies fragile 
~nd e~sily t~reatened by trawl,ing and 
mdustnal fishmg, usually based ·in large 
towns such as Hull, Grimsby and Aberdeen. 


In resolving these multitudinous sea use 
conflicts, there are certain " psychological 
blocks ", one of these to do with complexity. 
"Science" is often used by vested 
interests of all kinds (even scientists I) 
to obfuscate issues. " Scientific expertise ., 
will assert that problems of sea use are 
too complex for resolution or even 
understanding by ordinary mortals, and 
the traditional knowledge of the fisherman, 
say, is frequently (implidtly if nat 
explicitly) held in low regard : when all 
else .fails, ·it may be said that phenomenasuch as overfishing "cannot be scientifically 
proved ". 

Another concerns the real difficulties of 

comprehending the issues involved. De


spite the strong presence of the sea in our 

lite!'lature and life, in today's nation of 

urban dM'ellers the sea is little under' 
stood. It is not so much a problem of 

complexity as of "out of sight, out of 

mind". Even if this initial ignorance is 

overcome the fact remains that the sea 

is often complex and difficult to under


stand : so much :that exists and goes on 

there is invisible : it is not possible to 

see the fish which are being hunted to 

extinction. 

current policy issues 

Perhaps the most basic of the sea use 
issues which ·must now :be faced by the 
UK, is the clarification of relationshipsbetween major spheres of responsibility : 
the British fisheries are unregulated beyond 
the 12 mile limit, offshore mineral 
exploitation is based upon the median 
line principle, movement at sea is subject 
to international convention, and defence 
is under aegis of NATO. Then there is the 
division of responsibHities between the 
UK and the EEC in the spheres of resource 

utilisation (fisheries and offshore oil particularly). 
There is the possibility of a 
devolution of government from London 
to the four constituent parts of the heretofore 
United Kingdom. Against this background, 
four major areas in which action 

•is urgently needed can be identified : 
the first of these is the conservation and 
proper management of the biological resources 
of the open sea upon which the 
fisheries depend. In the field of distant 
water fishing, this involves co-operation 
with Iceland, Faroe and Norway in particular, 
off whos·e coasts the British distant 
water fl.eet has traditionally operated. 
(Conversely, nations which fish extensively 
off British coasts must be consulted.) 
The question of a unilateral extension 
of Bri.tish fishery limits will a·rise 
in the event of failure or delay in reaching 
agreement in UNCLOS. 
The second area concerns sea bed and 
sub-sea mineral resources including of 
course sand and gravel but, more importantly, 
oil and gas which are nonrenewable. 
Over these, BritJish jurisdictionis already complete but uncoordinated. 
The third area centres around surface 
movements : at present traffic problems 
are most acute in part of the North Sea 
where offshore oil installations (with their 
pipelines and well heads), traditional fish·
eries, and internationa·l shipping are in 
competition. The English Channel is already 
chockablock with shipping, and the 
·extension of the offshore oil industry into 
the Western Approaches will ·bring similar 
problems to the channel and the sea areas 

•between Great Britain and Ireland. 
The fourth major consideration is coastal 
zone policy : coastal navigation and 
dredging can alter the balance between 
erosion and deposition along ooasts. 
The deep water channels for v~ry largeships (very large crude carriers such as 
oil tankers and iron ore vessels) become 
subject to sudden changes in depth,
especially in areas of sandy bottom and 
strong tides, risking the grounding of 
vessds and posing extreme navigational 
and pollution dangers. Then there is the 
necessary regulation of recreation ; of 
conflicts over waste disposal (which are 
.espeoially acute off large estuarine con



urbations). There are problems over 
siting large scale industry which adversely 
affects amenity in remote, rural coasts particularly 
oil platform yards, refineries 
and nuclear power stations. Further interests 
include conservation of certain 
fish stocks fished mainly on the coasts,
especially lobsters, trout and salmon ; 
marine fish farming, which needs safeguarding 
from other uses, notably recreation 
and waste disposal ; coastal wrecks 
and other underwater archaeological sites. 

Again jurisdiction is complete, but po1icy 
uncoordina:ted. All these uses -of which 
none is expendable -have, by careful 
management, to be combined in the indivisible, 
tough but finely balanced, entity 
that is the sea. The sea has long been 
used in language, literature and music to 
portray -indeed reflect -life itself. 
Like the soil, that other great supporter 
of life on earth, it now needs .more looking 
after. 


4. maritime research 
Peter Fricke 

Britain must now prepare to manage a 
half a million square kilometres o:f water 
·environment. Management requires knowledge 
of the resource and of its alternative 
uses to be effeotive. The British 
style has so far been laissez faire, -the 
e~couragem~nt of resource exploitationWith regula:b1on devised as and when the 
need for it appeared. It is clear that if 
th.e resources -using the word in the 
Widest sense--are to be conserved and 
·allocat~d so as to achieve maximum 
benepcial us~ by all parties, this cannot 
continue. It .1s als·o clear that knowledge 
of the sea 1s now an essential tool for 
9"overnm~nt itself -as well as for the 
n;tdustry 1t. ~ishes to promote. Of neces-
Sity,. mantlme research has become 
fashwna;ble ; whether or not it is effective 
depends upon the funds and equipment 
made availa;ble, upon the balance between 
basic and applied research, and 
finally upon the coo:rdination and control 
of the scope and direction of British 

research. In the organisa;tion of maritime 
r~sea~ch we find a mirror image of that 
diffuswn of responsibilities and cloudiness 
of decision making in the public 
se~tor, and uncoordinated variety in the 
pnvate sector, to which we drew attention 
'in chapter two. 

four fields of research 

At present there are four broad fields of 
research in the maritime sphere. These 
can, conveniently, be divided into the 
purely scientific field, the ocean management 
field (which includes law, economic 
and environmental studies), the field of 
n1arine biology and fishery biology, and 
finally the field of transporation. There 
is also the who~e field of defence research, 
some elements of which -for 
instance the work of the hydrographers' 
department and the navy's diving and 
under-water work -are of wider than 
naval concern. 

The f.our civil. areas are interlinked : for 
example, the types of fish worth catching 
and the levels at which it is caught are 
partly determined by the design of vessels, 
the type of underwater gear, and the 
type of navigational a:ids and location 

finding equipment on boar.d ship. On the 
other hand, the concept o·f ocean m•anagement, 
of reconciling conflicting demands 
on the fish as a resourc·e, requires inputs 
hoth from the purely scientific research 
and from social science research in:to the 
·economics of fishing operations and into 
the legal aspects of sea use. To divide up 
the areas of research into these four 
spheres shows how coo-rdination is possible. 
In those universities where there is 
a:lrea.dy considerable maritime research 
effort, the emphasis is increasingly on 
'interdisoiplinary cnopera;tion. The comhined 
·effo·rts of the Edinburgh and 
Heriot-Watt universities have produced 
a ·series of interdisciplinary papersranging from the use of submersibles 
(including the design of submersilbles) to 
:the legal :implications of policing the 
North Sea. At the University of Wales 
Institute of Science and Technology 
{UWIST), an interdisciplinary Depart·ment 
of Maritim·e Studies deals with the ocean 
primarily as a resource and transpo~rtation 
medium from the social scientific 
point of view, and works on the economic, 
legal, technical and environmental 
problems involved in port, shipping and 
ocean resource utilisation. More traditionally, 
specialist departments of oc-eanography, 
of intern~tional law, of marin.e 
,biology and so on, which have existed for 
a long time in many universities, provide 
extremely valua;ble expertise (and sometimes 
equipment) that can, and should,
be fitted into the n~tional research map. 

Government sponsored research, either 
in universities or public lruboratories, accounts 
for the greater part of the existing 
maritime research effort : if this effort 
were coo,rdinated and directed more purposefutly, 
the country would ipso facto 
have the makings of an effective research 
strategy. 

the physical sciences : pure 
and applied 

In the general fields of hydrodynamics 
and hydraulics, the Hydraulics Research 
Station of the Department of the 
Environment, the National Physical Laboratory 
of the Department of Trade and 
the British Ship Research Association 


[8 


under:t1af(te applied research for "clients ", 
who may be Government departments or 
commercial firms. Applied research in 
ocean ·engineering and structures is also 
carried on at the National Physical Laboratory 
and at the Marine TechnologySupport Unit, HarwelL Much of this work 
is now sponso•red by the Ship and Marine 
Technoiogy Requirements Board of the 
Departm·ent of Industry, but there is 
stiH a lack of available applied research. 
(The board's first Chairman " was surprised 
. . . . to find that the design of 
offshore structures for the North Sea was 
not the exact science that might have 
been expected ".) Failings that have recently 
come to light concern our understanding 
.of the behaviour both of steel 
and of oiled concrete in the conditions 
of the North Sea. Partly, this in turn is 
due to the absence of adequate knowledge 
of waves. As a response to this 
1ack of applied research., the Departmentof Energy has recently set up its own 
Offshore Techno·logy Research Group. 

Conditions in the North Sea are such 
that designs, materials and men themselves 
are constantly being put to the test 

a:t the very frontiers of endurance, yet 
the safety of structures is sorely under 
researched. Equally under studied is the 
hydrography of the North Sea -an area 
of research for which the Hydrographer 
of th~ navy is responsible. 
In the univers'ities and polytechnics,
ocean engineering and naval archit·ecture 
are covered in specialist departments. In 
naval architecture the major laborato·ries 
and research organisations are those of 
National Physical Laboratory and of the 
British Ship Research ·Association. The 
latter is the research arm of the ship 
building industry as such, but research is 
also carried on by individual ship builders 
(the most eminent in this field are the 
research deoartments of Y-ARD and of 
Vickers). The Royal Naval Construction 
Corps, based at Bath, undertakes research 
into hull design and shipboard equipment, 
but with an emuhasis on defence,
rather than commercial, needs. Because 
this kind of research requires heavy investment 
dn laboratorv equipment, ships 
and supporting facilities, university de


partments working in the field mostly rely 
upon the agencies mentioned for facilities 
for experimental work, which has restricted 
fi•eld research. The Science Research 
Council has already examined the 
field of ocean engineering and has recommended 
work which could usefully be 
undertaken by universities and polytechnics, 
and a futher and broader review is 
now in progress. 

ocean management 

Ocean management is a new concept in 
the study of marine sources and use of the 
sea. So far the research had 1been done 
mo tly by individual social scientistseconom~
ists, geographers and lawyers-concerned with the proper development 
of the oc·ean resources. The in1tial 
thrust of much of their work derived 
from concern over the physical, biological 
and aesthetic well being of the oceans 
and with fisheflies and fish resource s·bock 
and management. But work on oil pollution 
and on dumping at sea is done in 
Government laJboratories. More recently, 
ocean management has been considered 
to include the management of the coastal 
zone and of the landIsea interface. This 
work has also mainly been carded out 
by individual researchers, chiefly in departments 
of geography or econom-ics in 
universities, but more recently specialis·ed 
centres have developed in which ocean 
management has ·been considered on an 
interdisciplinary basis. One area in this 
field of research that needs vigorous encouragement 
is economic comoarisons between 
various sea uses. (The general 
downgrading of fisheries, as compared 
to oil extraction, in the N.orth Sea is not 
a decision taken by Government in the 
light of research or analysis.) 

marine biology and fisheries 

Marine biology and fisheries research is 
still principally basic research, but increasingly 
applied research is now beingdeveloped. Marine biology as such is 
taught at most universities, and research 
is orinkled throughout the higher education 
system. There are specialist labs 


at several universities and polytechnicssuch as the ones at University College, 
Bangor, and at Stirling. 

Applied research on the other hand is 
largely underta~en or sponsored by the 
MAFF; the DAFS; the Departmentof the Environment, and by the Science 
Research Council. The first two of these 
have their own laboratories and undertake 
their own V'essel and gear .f1esearch 
and fish stock monitoring, including information 
about catching and about fish 
hehaVliour. Only within the past decade 
has much attention been paid to questions 
of maximum sustainable yield and stock 
conservation. The thrust of offioial research 
has now changed from optimising 
catch techniques to developing alternative 
catch sources and to conservingthose fish stocks that are still in existence. 
Ministry laboratories are also conducting 
fish farming research -an area of greatpotential, proVlided legal impediments to 
its developments can be removed. 

transportation 

Transportation and shipping research is 
carried out primarily at polytechnics, with 
a few universities also participating. The 
reason for this is that by historic acddent 
most nautical schools in the United 
Kingdom are attached either to colleges 
of technology, and advanced technology, 
or to polytechnics. These same institutions 
are also engaged _in the development 
and layout of navigational equipment. 
The Department of Trade marine 
division, being concerned with the safety 
of ships and seamen, has not played any 
great role in innovative research other 
than for safety equipment, and it is the 
Department of Industry's Economics and 
Statistics Division that has undertak,en 
most of the research into transportati~on 
economics. Primarily thi is concerned 
with Britain' role a a shipping nation. 
There are many private agencies to which 
hipping companies sub cribe, who give 
information on the state of the shippingmarket, and develop quite elruborate fore-
ca ts for ship chartering and commodities 
and trade movements. University research 
ha been done by individual workers, 

and centres devoted to analysing the role 
of shipping and marine transportationhave only recently evolved. Two of 
these centres are supported by the 
Science Research Council, one at the 
University of Liver.pool, the other at 
UWIST. 

research, education and 
training 

The actual spread of all this research in 
practke harely touches the fringe of 
ocean affairs and it does not equip Br-itain 
with an adequate understanding of 
the seas immediately around her. The 
Science Research Council 1973 Reporton Marine Technology noted that ., Our 
soientific knowledge of the sea, though 
considerruble in general terms, is extremely 
limited in many details" and it 
outlined two dozen new areas of research 
which it considered appropriate for grant 
suport. The Index of Current Maritime 
Research, published biennially by UWIST, 
shows that social science in ocean affairs 
is largely restricted to three or four interdisciplinary 
centres in universities and 
polytechnics, with a spvinkling of individual 
~academics spread through other 
institutions of higher education. It sometimes 
turns out that one subject is being 
independently studied in several places, 
funded by different Government departments. 
An example of this is the multiplicity 
of projects concerned with the design 
of ships' bridges none of which 
consider possible organi ational changes 
in ships' crews. 

The reader may feel that an immenselyactive research effort has been descri,bed, 
and indeed it has. But only if one accepts 
that ocean studies can be lef,t on a 
par with studies into the supply of water 
to the West Midlands will one be satisfied. 
The EEZ will giV<e Britain an area of 
the seas twice that of her land mass and 
the provision and organisation of research 

hould perhaps tbe related to the potential 
resources of this enormous body of 
water. 

The major criticism of present research 
efforts is that they are fragmented, that 
they are too narrow in terms of coverage 


and too shallow in depth of intensity. Too 
often, the basic research is missing (but 
in some areas there is qui,te unnecessaryoverlap). Too often, research grants are 
allocated among actual applicants, who 
are of course self -selected, rather than 
orchestrated in acco.Pdance with an actual 
research strategy. And also they tend to 
'be allocated for very precise research projects, 
rather than for large scale multidisciplinary 
work. In the past decade only 
the Natural Environmental Research 
Council has pursued a coherent (iflimited, through lack of funds) research 
strategy in the physical sciences of the 
ooean. 

The issue which has to be confronted is 
this .tack of focus which is due to the 
large number of separate organisations, 
each with a finger or two in the maritime 
pie. The question is how to achieve coordination 
while maintaining flexibility 
-one of the most usual problems of 
Government. One model that could be 
used for coo.Pdinating applied resea~rch is 
the Netherlands Maritime lnsbitute. This 
was form·ed in 1973 by the Netherlands 
Government, the Netherlands Association 
of Shipbuilders, the Royal Netherlands 
Ship Owners Association an~d the Dutch 
Seafarers Federation. Its purpose is to 
conduct maritime research by combining 
existing activities and available funds. 
The institute acts as a coordinating and 
executive organisation for research in the 
fields of maritime navigation, maritime 
technology, maritime transport economics, 
maritime sociology and training. Because 
of its scope, it is able to mesh the 
activities of the considerable number of 
other institutes and individuals who are 
already conducting research projects.
Similar coordination already exists in a 
partial model in the Natural Environmen


tal Research Council. 

Another, perhaps complementary, model 
for the coordination of research efforts, 
this time in basic research, is the United 
States Sea Grant Program. This channels 
federal funds for maritime research and 
education to colleges and research institutes. 
Originally conceived as a means of 
encouraging research activities in the colleges 
of coastal States -in parallel with 

the land grant coUeges-the Sea Grant 
Program is now a~ble, in conjunction with 
the National Academy of Sciences, the 
Department of Commerce and other government 
agencies, to :indicate priority 
areas for reseaPCh and to encourage marine 
education. The result, over the last 
ten years, has been basic maritime research 
projec·ts in more than 500 institutions. 
(Although some applied research 
is also carded out under ·this programme, 
this is still mostly contracted fo·r by individual 
us governmental agencies, and 
not yet coor.dinated in the same way.) 

The creation of a maritime research coordinating 
body in Brita~in wo-uld considerably 
simplify the present complex 
arrangem.ent and frequently over-lapping 
of reS'earch projects. It would also, as 
we have seen fro.m the experience of the 
Natural Environmental Research Council, . 
simplify problems of funding and of : 
providing laboratory and other facil.iti<es 
for research workers. To group maritime 
research in fields of study would simplfy ' 
the existing arrangements, when research 
grant applications often fall either 
into ·the interstices ·between the parishes 
of two or three committees within one of 
the R·esearch Councils, or into those between 
the dioceses of the Res·earch 
Councils themselv·es. Frequently they are 
now only funded after damagingly long 
travels through various ad hoc committees. 


At the same time, the maritime activities 
of all the ·res·earch councils-the Council 
for ScientHic Policy, the Science Research 
Council, the Agricultural Research Council 
and the Natural Environment Research 
Council -could be coordinated 
in a joint committee chaired by the responsible 
minister, or his chief scientist, 
and an overall ·maritime research stategy · 
could then be developed. In this way, 
both the individual academic researcher 
and the private commercial company, as 
well as the various Government agencies, 
would be abl,e to envisage and to propose 
research projects within the v.isible 
framework of a known strategy. 

Research in any area both feeds on, and 

nourishes, its discipline. Coordinated ef



forts in a given field tra:nslate the1nselves 
into postgraduate, then undergradullite,
and finally secondary school programmes. 
In the field of marine 'biology and ecologyand :in naval :archit·ecture, there are well 
estrublished teaching and traJ.ning pro-
grammes. This is true also of oceanography. 
In ocean management the process 
is just beginning, with the establishment 
this year of the Centre for Maritime 
La:w •and Policy at UWIST. The 
training of ocean engineers is at the midpoint 
of its development. In marine transportation, 
the training process of ship 
operators is long established, and the 
education of shipping and port managers 
at universities and polytechnics, is no 
longer an esoteric subject. Whilst these 
cours·es have developed a:nd whilst most 
of the needs for graduates, other than in 
petroleum engineering and ocean engineefling, 
have been met, this does not hoid 
for the education of technicians. To exploit 
North Sea oil, the research facilities 
of MAFF and DAFS were largely stripped 
of their skilled technical employees by the 

oil companies, and there was no one to replace 
them and no training programme 
to hand. Some local technical collegeshaN·e long provided sandwich courses for 
apprentices in the shipbuilding and marine 
·engineering indust~ies, but for offshore 
and marine work, additional 
courses in electronics, hydrographic tech· 
niques, sonar and unders·ea accoustics, as 
well as in the mechanical engineeringtechniques for ocean structure buildingand maintenance, are required. Too planthis educational sector, local education 
authorities must be made aware of the 
need for these skills, and must be able to 
plug into information and research networks 
to monitor educational effectiveness. 
Again, an overa11 strategy is missingand has to be provided. 

the naval contribution 

The navy's potential contribution has 
been in many ways sorely negleoted. 
When oil and gas were discovered in the 
North Sea, it should have become clear 
that a very substantial increase in the 
amount of physical information about 
the seas around these islands was going 

to he needed, and needed soon. The contdbution 
from the Hydrographer of the 
navy, in pro·viding surveys and charts 
could obviously .be very considerable. 
Yet, as the recent study of ·the North Sea 
by the David Davies Memorial Trust has 
shown, we are still not able to muster 
adequate informaotion aJbout the Str·aits 
of Dover and the southern North Sea to 
devis·e a proper management scheme. 
The continental shelf of the United 
Kingdom is s·tiil not properly surveyed 
and at the present .rrute it will take anything 
up to a thousand shi'P years for the 
survey of the North Sea alone to be completed 
(two ocean survey ships were" diverted" 
to this job in 1974). Interdepartmental 
bickering about funding the 
Hydrographer's department-now on the 
Defence vote-could even result in a reduction 
in the work done. Yet more than 
7 per cent of Admiralty charts of North 
European waters are now found on reexamination 
to need immediate correction 
; and there is quite inadequate 
h~drographic knowledge of many of the 
sea areas through which concrete oil production 
platforms with a draught of more 
than 40 fathoms have to be floated. For 
the Hydrog!'laphic department to carry 
on at its present insufficient level an increase 
in funding of some two million 
pounds is needed. To bring its work up 
to the level required, the increase needed 
would be some 7 million pounds. The 
minute scale of this expenditure can be 
seen in relation to the expenditures required 
for the development of our o~shore 
oil -quite apart from all non-oil 
development. For this, a figure of £15,~00 
million in the next 10 yea.rs has plausibly 
been suggested : £7 million is less than 

0.05 per cent of £15,000,000,000. 'J!le i~formation 
the Hydrographer provides IS 
fundamental to the whole business of offshore 
go¥ernm·ent. 
the flow of information 

It is not enough to foster research in the 
universities and the government research 
centres. J.f research is to flourish, its raw 
material, information, must flow freely. 
In the early days of oil developments m 
the North Sea, the requirements of 


" commercial secrecy " were allowed q uilte 
to over-ride the national requirements for 
open information: geological knowledge 
acquired by oil compani,es was passed,
but confidentiaHy, to the Government, and 
the companies were given a permanent 
veto over any ·further disclosure. This particular 
situation has now changed and 
the veto limited, but company information 
aJbout design and structural faults, 
about maintenance problems, even about 
the weather, is still not divulged -although 
in the national interest it clearlymight he. The recently published first 
Report from the Select Committee on 
Nationalised Industries (House of Commons 
paper 345, July 1975) has severely 
criticised the Government's fa:ilwe over 
the years to build up its •technical expertise, 
either by ,requiring more information 
from the operating oil companies 
or by building up a reservoir of experienced 
staff. 

making use of research 

But even ample information, technical 
expertise, and experienced and well 
train,ed staff are not enough if the government 
machine itself is unaJble or unwilling 
to make use of what comes its way. The 
appetite of the administrative civil service 
for unwelcom'e information is naturally 
small (particularly so if 1it comes from 
another part of the wood) and information 
suggesting major policy changes 
tends to be rejected and evidence " reinterpreted 
". 

The results of grass roots research reach 
the top only after a chinese whispers 
system of communication -first up the 
research l~dder itS'elf, then through the 
undergrowth of the " customer " department, 
then across a great divide into 
another department, and finally, quitepossibly upside down, on to some unsuspecting 
minister's desk. Examples of 
this CLre the statements Foreign Office 
Ministers were making during the Conservative 
Government's last Cod War 
with Iceland. Their briefs included statements 
to the effect that cod stocks in the 
North Atlantic were perfectly healthy and 
that the Icelandic case for regulating 

catches off Iceland was, quite silnply, 
bad. In fact, the then most recent report 
on North Atlantic cod stocks, completed 
only a few months earlier by an international 
working party chaired by a distinguished 
MAFF expert, had concluded 
that the cod fishing" effort" in the whole 
North Atlantic needed to be reduced by 
half if a future " very large drop in 
catch " was to be ~avoided. The report 
was at the time confidential and the then 
Minister, questioned in the House of 
Lords, found herself thoroughly embarrassed 
when its text was leaked. Another 
consequence of this particular failure to 
take research finding into account was 
that British maritime policy was pointing 
in quite the wrong direction during the 
run up to the United Nations Law of 
the Sea Conference. A rectifying volte 
face is now almost complete. 



5. sea use planning 
and consultation 
Robin Grove-White 

· All planning in a democracy requires a 
measure of consensus about priorities.
The way in which such consensus is established 
is by consultation and argument 
amongst bodies likely to have views on 
what the priorities should be. Exploitation 
of the sea and sea bed raises quite 
new problems for such consultation 
among interests-and hence for planning 
-since some of the interests who exploit 
the sea's resources are large economic 
units with (legitimately) largely selfish 
priorities. But offshore ae;tivity affects 
the long term interes,ts of all of us, both 
in the sea itself and on shore. Hence the 
problems arise-how could machineryfor sea use planning be made more than 
just a means for the more or less efficient 
div.ision of spoils amongst economic 
powerful 1interests unconcerned with enhancing 
the community's long term advantag
·e? 

The statutory framework for land use 
planning offers useful clues as to horw 
the problem of c·onsultation might be 
approached. In the Town and Country 
Planning Acts, the UK has a system of 
regulation uses which takes account of a 

· wide range of factors and straightforward 
day to day exploitation of economic resources. 
Indeed the system has been 
evolved since the Town and CountryPlanning Act 1947 in deliberate recognition 
of the importance of non-economic 
(or commercially im·uonderable) and 
third party factors in planning. It has 
accepted the importance of the views of 
bodies with such "non-economic" priorities 
in helping formulate overall planning 
priorities. Plann,ing authorities under 
the Acts have been required positively 
to encourage the articu'lation of points of 
view so that they can gain the fullest 
sense of the range of factors of which 
their policies ought to take account. The 
relevance of this for sea use planning is 
that it too must be designed to seek out 
interests-even if this should entail procedures 
which could delay or restrict 
some maritime developments in the short 
or long term. 

The present state of knowledge about 
marine resources makes it improba1ble 
that strategic sea use planning-on the 

analogy of land use structure planning-could be possible for some years to 
come. But strategic considerations could 
be accomodated within some kind of 
sea use " development control " system.
The impacts such a system would have 
to take account of will arise on shore as 
well as off shore. Already, in response to 
the pressures of North Sea oil, departmental 
policy guidelines have been produced 
to cope with consequential developments 
in Scottish coastal areas. The 
North Sea Oil and Gas: Coastal Planning 
Guidelines (Scottish Development 
Department, 1974) complemented by the 
recommendations of the Oil Development 
CouncH in North Sea Oil and the 
Environment (HMSO, 1974) reflect the intense 
conflicts with land use interests to 
which offshore developments have already 
given rise. 

A still more graphic illustration of the 
pressures from offshore activity (and of 
Government's response to them) is the 
recently enacted Offshore Petroleum Development 
(Scotland) Act 1975, which 
en~bles the Secretary of State to acquireland compulsorily for oil related developments 
at short notice. As originallylaid before Parliament, the Bill would not 
only have dispensed with any obligation 
to hold a publ1ic 1inquiry into objections 
to a land acquisition ; it would also have 
precluded the possibility of any parliamentary 
scrutiny of controversial orders. 
During the Bill's passage, the Government 
only partially accepted the contention 
of MPs that this was an unwarranted 
extension of executive power at the expense 
of Parliamep.t, arguing that the 
over-riding urgent necessity to bring oil 
ashore rendered such constitutional 
niceties superfluous. They were defeated 
on constitutional grounds, when the Bill 
reached the House of Lords__.but the 
sequence of events revealed the extent to 
which offshore pressures can lead the 
executi·ve to favour one set of interests 
Cl!t the expense of all others (in this case, 
without benefit of proper research). 

In addition to land acquisition powers,
the Offshore Petroleum Development 
(Scotland) Act gave the Secretary of 
State powers to make so called Sea Des



ignation Orders, g1vmg himself powersof control over oil related developments 
in specified offshore waters. But these 
orders, unlike the land variety, are now 
subject to only minimal consultation with 
affected interests ; a proposal to designate 
a "sea area" under the Act in and 
around the Sound of Raasay was reported 
in June 1975 to be giving rise to 
conflict with the local planning authority, 
the new Highland Region Council ( 0 fJ


shore Engineer, June 1975). Under the 
Petroleum and Submarine Pipeline Bill 
now going through Parliament, the Secretary 
of Sta:te for Energy is required to 
consult other interested parties (such as 
fishermen) over the routing of pipe lines, 
but the final decision is his. He is at once 
judge and prosecutor in his own case. 

If oil developments are in the ascendency 
at present, the reverse appears true of the 
marine aggregates industry. The winningof seaibed sand and gravel for use as 
aggregate-the demand is increasingsteadily-has extensive onshore implications. 
On balance, it may well be desirable 
that an increasing proportion of 
the nation's building materials should 
come from offshore sources. The environmental 
disadvantages of increasing onshore 
extraction are considera·ble. Valuruble 
land is temporarily or permanentlydespoiled and lost to other uses. However, 
at present, before prospecting or dredgingfor marine aggregates can take place, an 
operator must obtain a licence from the 
Crown Estates Commissioners. Such a 
licence will only be forthcoming where 
there are no significant objections from 
any of the wide range of government departments 
with offshore interests. Taking 
account of such objections, however 
speculatively advanc_ed, has already led 
to the sterilisation of considera·ble quantities 
of marine aggregates. As matters 
stand, an operator has no realistic way 
of challenging the refusal of a licence by 
the Commisioners, even though the onshore 
alternative sites to be worked instead 
may entail for greater public disadvantages. 


If the experience outlined above suggests 
that offshore developments have substantial 
onshore impacts, the principal prob


lem for a planning system is to ensure 
that all interests (the nature of some -of 
them as yet hard to predict) are systematically 
guaranteed a voice. The land use 
planning system again provides clues 
as to how this might be achieved. Judgements 
on land use planning proposals 
are taken, ultimately, through the political 
process, and any individual planningdecision is taken by a local authority or 
by the Secretary of State as a politicalvalue judgement. 

In the process leading up to the decision, 
there is no one body to represent the 
public interest as such. The major publicinterest emerges from the clash of privateand minor public interests. In a controversial 
case, the interest of the local planning 
authority (broadly defined though it 
may be) becomes just one among a num·
ber of private interests. So consultation 
may involve conflict-preferably, from 
the community's point of view, public 
conflict. 

The effectiveness of this system is clearest 
in those cases where a planning applicant 
appeals to the Secretary of State against 
the decision of a planning authority, or 
where the Secretary of State "calls in" 
a controversial application for his own 
determination. In either case there is 
generally a public inquiry, conducted byan independent inspector, at which arguments 
for and against the proposal are 
heard. It may be that the development is 
opposed only by a local amenity society 
-but such opposition can highlight the 
potential undesirable impacts of the development. 
Those who object tend to 
ferret out a scheme's weaknesses, thus 
·ensuring the Secretary of State becomes 
aware of them. There are of course cases 
where the objectors are too weak, poor 
or ill informed to perform this role (inremote rural areas, slums or small fishing 
communities, for example). Nevertheless 
in most cases the relevant criticlisms 
tend to be articulated. 

Before applying this experience to sea 
use planning, two important points need 
stressing. First, the importance attached 
to the views of third parties (principally 
on land, those objectors or supporters of 


a scheme who have not directly affected 
property interest) happens to derive almost 
entirely from considerations of 
political weight. Local residents associations, 
amenity bodies and more specific 
pressure groups have gained authority 
in the planning system because they reflect 
strong and articulate constituencies 
of opinion, local and national. Those 
who make planning decisions at all levels 
now recognise this. In the nature of 
. things, however, there are no propertyinterests at sea-and there is only one 
existing sea based pressure group-the. Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of 
the Sea-a loose federation of commercial 
and amenity interests. " Disinter. 
ested " and " alternative " bodies with 
the sea as their focus, lacking a territorial 
constituency, will tend to lack pol.itical 
sanctions of the kind which concentrate 
a1:tention of land based authorities on the 
views of local or nClltional voluntarysocieties. Yet i.f right decisions are to be 
taken, it .is essential that the widest possible 
range of views and understanding 
be made available to the minister. Second, 
the truly colossal political weight of existing 
sea use interests again needs emphasis. 
Already-in the passage of the 
Offshore Petroleum Development (Scotland) 
Act 1975-we have witnessed the 
kinds of pressure on land based interests 
that the offshore oil industry and its subsidiar1es 
can exer·t. Where substantial 
ignorance still prevails-as it does concerning 
almost all offshore activities-
the critique of power backed argument 
becomes more and more .important. What 
is good for the oil industry is no more 
certainly good for Britain than what was 
, good for General Moto·rs was good for 
America. These experiences quiteglaringly demonstrated that the problem 
vis a vis sea use consultation is not so 
much the identification of the commercial 
interests to be consulted as finding a 
method for transferring to the administration 
of the seas the land use experience, 
that the public interest is best protected 
by the clash orf all interests, public 
and private, onshore and offshore alike. 
(A preliminary list of commercial interests 
might include: fishing, fish and mollusc 
farming, aggregates, oil, insurance, 
shipping, metal and non-metal minerals, 


recreation, tourism and waste disposal.)
It is in the nature of political activity in 
these days of steadily widening executive 
discretion that pressure and interest 
groups evolve to influence the publicformulation of priorities in new spheres, 
as these spheres gain statutory recognition. 
It is thus inevita,ble-and certainlyhighly desirable-that the new pressure 
groups should evolve to influence the 
ways in which the seas' resources are exploited. 
Just as bodies such as the Town 
and Country Planning Association, the 
Council for the Protection of Rural 
England, Friends of the Earth, and indeed 
the British Road Federation and the 
Sand and Gravel Association, represent 
and educate public and Governmental 
opinion on important aspects of the onshore 
environment, so analogous bodies 
with the sea as their concern will develop, · 
once procedures for sea use planning are 
in being. Predictably, the oil industry has 
already been quick to adapt itself to the 
changing situation. Bodies such as the Oil 
Companies International Marine Forum 
(ociMF) and the Oil Industry International 
Exploration and Protection 
Forum (formed in 1970 and 1974 respectively) 
are pressure groups with extensive 
resources and a sophisticatedgrasp of offshore politics. But the system 
itself must find a means to overcome, by 
procedural guarantees, the disadvantages 

" disinterested " groups will experience
from lack of a conventional political
base. 


the statutory framework : 
some suggestions 

The paragraphs above have pointed to 
the central difficulty for consultation. 
What legLslative possibilities exist for 
meeting the dangers? Once again, the existing 
land use system offers clues. Public 
confidence in this system rests on the 
artificial but creative tension that arises 
from the sharing of responsibilities under 
the TOtWn and Country Planning Acts between 
local authorities and central Government. 
The two tier nature of this 
structure--controversial decisions at the 
lower level giving rise to intervention at 
the higher level-and the scrupulous independence 
of the inspectors who con



26 
duct inquiries are the critical elements in 
the tension. Both elements contribute to 
the essential openness of the system, for 
the division of responsibility means that 
disputes always have the potential to be-
come public. 
A comparruble tension could be intro-
duced into the projected sea use planning 
system. Ideally, the temptation to giveentire planning responsibility to either a 
minister or a statutory agency would be 
resisted in favour of the creation of a 
two tier system with both minister and 
agency. Under such a system, arrange-
ment might provide for (a) the establish-
ment of a national sea use planning 
agency (SUPA) with statutory responsib-
ility for the granting of licences for 
marine development, with or without 
conditions. SUPA would also negotiatestrategic plans wherever possible----withcoastal local authorities or particularcommercial interests for example-andwould be obliged to publish regular re-
ports on its activities. Rejection of an 
application for a licence by SUPA could 
lead the applicant to appeal to (b) the 
Minister, who, in such an event, could 
cause a public inquiry to be held before 
he made a decision. Such an inquirywould be conducted by a member of (c) 
an inspectorate responsible-as are land 
use planning inspectors~to the Lord 
Chancellor's office. 
Such a system would be open to the rep-
resentations of all interests. The statutoryduties of both the Minister and SUPA 
would focus their attention on non-
commercial as well as commercial aspects. 
Both developers and SUPA would quickly 
find it in their interests to anticipate and 
resolve possible conflicts with other in-
terests onshore as we'll as offshore before 
they arose-just as has happened with 
the land use planning system. 
The vital element is tension. Third partiesand hence the public interests gain from 
the availability of more than one focus of 
power open to influence or argument.
Decisions, being public, are less apt to be 
dominated by narrow expediencies than 
under other more unitary a:rrangements. 
There may be compelling political reasons 
(as Elizabeth Young indicates in chapter 
two) why a less elaborate system than 
this should be embarked upon. But a two 
tier system would entail great benefits of 
both equity and efficiency. 
Sea use consultation should draw on the 
iessons of the land use planning system. 
It should be designed to anticipate and 
actively encourage " disinterested " and 
"alternative" as well as "interested" 
pressure group activity and it should 
embrace onshore as well as offshore im-
pacts. It should be bold from the outset. 
For as has been suggested elsewhere in 
this pamphlet, activity on and under the 
sea will increasingly affect us all and 
decisions as to the manner of its exploita-
tion demand fuH public involvement a 
the earliest stages. The fact that those 
who have so far comprehended its poten-
tial a-re principally those with economic · 
interests makes it important to build in ' 
safeguards as soon as possible·. 
26 
duct inquiries are the critical elements in 
the tension. Both elements contribute to 
the essential openness of the system, for 
the division of responsibility means that 
disputes always have the potential to be-
come public. 
A comparruble tension could be intro-
duced into the projected sea use planning 
system. Ideally, the temptation to giveentire planning responsibility to either a 
minister or a statutory agency would be 
resisted in favour of the creation of a 
two tier system with both minister and 
agency. Under such a system, arrange-
ment might provide for (a) the establish-
ment of a national sea use planning 
agency (SUPA) with statutory responsib-
ility for the granting of licences for 
marine development, with or without 
conditions. SUPA would also negotiatestrategic plans wherever possible----withcoastal local authorities or particularcommercial interests for example-andwould be obliged to publish regular re-
ports on its activities. Rejection of an 
application for a licence by SUPA could 
lead the applicant to appeal to (b) the 
Minister, who, in such an event, could 
cause a public inquiry to be held before 
he made a decision. Such an inquirywould be conducted by a member of (c) 
an inspectorate responsible-as are land 
use planning inspectors~to the Lord 
Chancellor's office. 
Such a system would be open to the rep-
resentations of all interests. The statutoryduties of both the Minister and SUPA 
would focus their attention on non-
commercial as well as commercial aspects. 
Both developers and SUPA would quickly 
find it in their interests to anticipate and 
resolve possible conflicts with other in-
terests onshore as we'll as offshore before 
they arose-just as has happened with 
the land use planning system. 
The vital element is tension. Third partiesand hence the public interests gain from 
the availability of more than one focus of 
power open to influence or argument.
Decisions, being public, are less apt to be 
dominated by narrow expediencies than 
under other more unitary a:rrangements. 
There may be compelling political reasons 
(as Elizabeth Young indicates in chapter 
two) why a less elaborate system than 
this should be embarked upon. But a two 
tier system would entail great benefits of 
both equity and efficiency. 
Sea use consultation should draw on the 
iessons of the land use planning system. 
It should be designed to anticipate and 
actively encourage " disinterested " and 
"alternative" as well as "interested" 
pressure group activity and it should 
embrace onshore as well as offshore im-
pacts. It should be bold from the outset. 
For as has been suggested elsewhere in 
this pamphlet, activity on and under the 
sea will increasingly affect us all and 
decisions as to the manner of its exploita-
tion demand fuH public involvement a 
the earliest stages. The fact that those 
who have so far comprehended its poten-
tial a-re principally those with economic · 
interests makes it important to build in ' 
safeguards as soon as possible·. 

6. the law 
Vaughan Lowe 

Britain's claims to jurisdiction over activities 
in the adjacent seas are at present 
modest: . broadly speaking, the UK claims 

(a) a 3 mile territorial sea beyond its 
' land territory and internal waters (although 
there is no obstacle in international 
law to a claim of 12 miles) and 

r 

complete control over everyone within it 
: (except for persons on board ships exercising 
the right of innocent passage) ; 


1 (b) jurisdiction over all persons exploring 
or exploiting the resources of its continental 
shelf ; (c) jurisdiction over British 
ships wherever they are ; and (d) certain 
limited rights over foreign vessels on the 
high seas, usually under treaty arrangements. 
This means that, for the most 
part, the UK has no control at all over 
foreign ships beyond the 3 mile limit 
since, as a rule, under international law, 
ships on the high seas are subject only 
to the jurisdiction of the State whose flag 
they fly. 

There is no unified body of law applicable 
to offshore activities. Most of the criminal 
law, and the civil law apply to activities 
in the territoria1 sea, to British ships, and 
to installations on the British continental 

· shelf, and there is a large and complex 
body of primary and secondary legislation 
dealing with particular uses o.f the coastal 
zone. 


non livinQ resources 

The production of oil and gas has been 
regulated since 1934 by the Petroleum 
(Production) Act, 1934, which was extended 
to the continental she1f by the 
Continental Shelf Act, 1964. Control over 
producers is achieved by the incorporation 
of a wide range of conditions in exploration 
and production licences: model 
licences are laid down, the most recent 
edition appearing in the Offshore Oil and 
Submarine Pipelines Bill, 1975-which 
·also provides for the regulation of an 
British pipelines on the British continental 
shelf. Licences have been used, in 
conjunction with the powers given to the 
Secretary of State for Energy by the 
Mineral Workings (Offshore Installations) 
Act. 1971, to safeguard the safety and 
welfare of employees on the rigs (the 

Factories Ads do not apply to offshore 
activities) as well as to control the actual 
production. Lack o'f experience of conditions 
obtaining in the North Sea (to 
which production is at present limited) 
has made it difficult to lay down a comprehensive 
set of regulations, ·especia!llyfor the construction of rigs, but a set ·of 
standards is emerging in the form of 
regulations and as Department of Energy 
Guidelines en construction. Dredging for 
sand and gravel "aggregate" .for the 

1

bUi·lding industry is licensed by the Crown 
Estate Commissioners, who in practiceconsult, among others, the Department of 
the Environment regarding the effect en 
·coastal erosion, and the Ministry of Agriculture, 
Fisheries and Food (MAFF) regarding 
the effect on fisheries. 

living resources 

Following the 1964 European Fisheries 
Convention, the UK claimed a 12 mile 
fishery zone in the Fishery Limits Act, 
1964. This zone is now divided into two 
·belts ; an inner 6 mile belt within which 
fishing is ·reserved to British fishermen, 
and an outer belt within which certain 
·other States were granted specific fishery 
.tights. These were largely supplantedwhen Britain joined the EEC because the 
EEC po'licy requires equality of access to 
all national fishing grounds, and Norway 
is the only external State which still enjoys 
rights to fish (off the Orkneys and 
Shetlands) within UK fishery limits. At the 
time of ·entry into the Comon Market 
concessions were negotiated allowing the 
reservation of the " inner six " and certain 
areas of the " outer six " to British 
fishermen. These concessions are due to 
expire at the end of 1982 after which, 
unless new arrangements emerge from the 
renegotiation of the Common Fisheries 
Policy, fishermen of ·other EEC states 
would have the same fishing rights as UK 
fishermen. " Renegotiation " is expectedhowever. 

With'in the 12 mile zone, Sea FisheryOfficers are given, under the Sea Fisheries 
Act, 1968, powers over all fishingvessels. Outside the zone, in respect of 
foreign ships, such powers only exist 


28 
under conventional agreemen:ts such as 
the North East Atlantic Fisheries Con-
vention. British ships, of course, are sub-
ject to Fishery Officers' control wherever 
they might be, just as they are subject to 
British control in all other matters. Within 
the 3 mile territorial sea, 12 Sea Fisheries 
Districts covering England and Wales 
have !been established under the Sea 
Fisheries Regula:tion Act, 1966; within 
these, the Local Fisheries Committees 
have wide powers, subject to ministerial 
consent, to regulate sea fishing and activi-
ties affecting it-for instance by prescri:b-
ing methods of fishing, limiting the time 
and place of fishing, and regulating dump-
ing in their areas. Ministerial Orders under 
the Sea Fisheries {Conservation) Act, 1967 
have wider effect, as they extend not only 
to the territorirul sea but to the who1e of 
the 12 mile zone. There are many other 
Acts which touch on fisheries, giving 
powers of licensing, regulation and pro-
tection. In particular, the Sea Fisheries 
Act, 1968 gives ministers power to make 
Orders implementing fishery conventions, 
and Sea Fishery Officers powers of " stop 
and search " and where necessary of 
ordering into port ships suspected of 
violating the regulations, which powers 
extend to the area covered by the con-
vention. 
pollution 
Pollution of the coastal zone is governed 
·bY three main acts. The comprehensiveControl of Pollution Act, 1974 covers 
land based pollution, and, broadly, makes 
it an offence to permit noxious or pol-
luting matter to ·enter waters within the 
3 mile limit. The Dumping at Sea A·ct, 
1974 prohibits the dumping of "sub-
stances or articles " within the 3 mile 
limit, or ·by British ships anywhere, with-
out permission. The Prevention of Oil 
Pollution Act, 1971 prohibits the dis-
charge of oil within the 3 mile limit, from 
installations on the UK continental shelf, 
and from British ships. It also contains 
a section which allows, ultimately, any 
action necessary (including total destruc-
tion), against shipping casualties threat-
ening large scale pollution of UK waters ; 
this is unusua[ in permitting action against 
foreign vessels on the high seas (~ beyond t 
British jurisdiction) without the consent 
of the flag State. This Act, and the 1974 
Dumping Act, evidence a progressive at-
titude towards pollution control insofar 
as they both gave effeot to international 
convention not then in force, but the 
conventions themselves are not wholly 
s'atisfactory and difficulties of enforce-
ment and the smallness of fines imposed 
under the Acts will detract from their 
efficiency. 
In addition to these measures based on 
criminal responsibility, there is a con-
siderable body of civil law permitting the 
recovery of damages for pollution. Diffi-
culties arise in recovering damages at 
common law, in negligence or nuisance 
for example, because of necessity of 
proving some default. The M·erchant 
Shipping (Oil Pollution) Act, 1971 has 
prov.ided a remedy for ship based pol-. 
lution 1based on strict liability, under · 
which both damages and the costs of pre-' 
ventive measures can be recovered. 
navigation 
Under the Merchant Shipping Acts, a 
wide range of ·regulations governingmanning, construction and equipmentstandaJrds for ships are set out, and there 
is a power to prevent any ship, British 
or foreign, leaving a British port if it fails . 
to meet these standards and is so unsea-
worthy as to endanger human l·ife. There 
are provisions in some cases for the re-
ciprocal recognition of certificates of 
compliance with standards given by other 
States. Self interest in the safety of the 
ship seems to secure s·ome degree of 
compliance with such standards and with 
intemat,iona:l " rules of the road " laid 
down in conventions such as the 1960 
TMCO Collisions regulations and the 
Safety of Life at Sea Convention of the 
sanTe year. Many such rules are incor-
porated in legislation applicable to Brit-
ish ships and to all ships ~in territorial 
waters. Although criminal penalties exist, 
in practice the weight given to these rul~s 
in civil actions arising out of coUisions IS 
proba!bly a: more ·effective inducement to 
abide by the rules. Routing schemes are 
28 
under conventional agreemen:ts such as 
the North East Atlantic Fisheries Con-
vention. British ships, of course, are sub-
ject to Fishery Officers' control wherever 
they might be, just as they are subject to 
British control in all other matters. Within 
the 3 mile territorial sea, 12 Sea Fisheries 
Districts covering England and Wales 
have !been established under the Sea 
Fisheries Regula:tion Act, 1966; within 
these, the Local Fisheries Committees 
have wide powers, subject to ministerial 
consent, to regulate sea fishing and activi-
ties affecting it-for instance by prescri:b-
ing methods of fishing, limiting the time 
and place of fishing, and regulating dump-
ing in their areas. Ministerial Orders under 
the Sea Fisheries {Conservation) Act, 1967 
have wider effect, as they extend not only 
to the territorirul sea but to the who1e of 
the 12 mile zone. There are many other 
Acts which touch on fisheries, giving 
powers of licensing, regulation and pro-
tection. In particular, the Sea Fisheries 
Act, 1968 gives ministers power to make 
Orders implementing fishery conventions, 
and Sea Fishery Officers powers of " stop 
and search " and where necessary of 
ordering into port ships suspected of 
violating the regulations, which powers 
extend to the area covered by the con-
vention. 
pollution 
Pollution of the coastal zone is governed 
·bY three main acts. The comprehensiveControl of Pollution Act, 1974 covers 
land based pollution, and, broadly, makes 
it an offence to permit noxious or pol-
luting matter to ·enter waters within the 
3 mile limit. The Dumping at Sea A·ct, 
1974 prohibits the dumping of "sub-
stances or articles " within the 3 mile 
limit, or ·by British ships anywhere, with-
out permission. The Prevention of Oil 
Pollution Act, 1971 prohibits the dis-
charge of oil within the 3 mile limit, from 
installations on the UK continental shelf, 
and from British ships. It also contains 
a section which allows, ultimately, any 
action necessary (including total destruc-
tion), against shipping casualties threat-
ening large scale pollution of UK waters ; 
this is unusua[ in permitting action against 
foreign vessels on the high seas (~ beyond t 
British jurisdiction) without the consent 
of the flag State. This Act, and the 1974 
Dumping Act, evidence a progressive at-
titude towards pollution control insofar 
as they both gave effeot to international 
convention not then in force, but the 
conventions themselves are not wholly 
s'atisfactory and difficulties of enforce-
ment and the smallness of fines imposed 
under the Acts will detract from their 
efficiency. 
In addition to these measures based on 
criminal responsibility, there is a con-
siderable body of civil law permitting the 
recovery of damages for pollution. Diffi-
culties arise in recovering damages at 
common law, in negligence or nuisance 
for example, because of necessity of 
proving some default. The M·erchant 
Shipping (Oil Pollution) Act, 1971 has 
prov.ided a remedy for ship based pol-. 
lution 1based on strict liability, under · 
which both damages and the costs of pre-' 
ventive measures can be recovered. 
navigation 
Under the Merchant Shipping Acts, a 
wide range of ·regulations governingmanning, construction and equipmentstandaJrds for ships are set out, and there 
is a power to prevent any ship, British 
or foreign, leaving a British port if it fails . 
to meet these standards and is so unsea-
worthy as to endanger human l·ife. There 
are provisions in some cases for the re-
ciprocal recognition of certificates of 
compliance with standards given by other 
States. Self interest in the safety of the 
ship seems to secure s·ome degree of 
compliance with such standards and with 
intemat,iona:l " rules of the road " laid 
down in conventions such as the 1960 
TMCO Collisions regulations and the 
Safety of Life at Sea Convention of the 
sanTe year. Many such rules are incor-
porated in legislation applicable to Brit-
ish ships and to all ships ~in territorial 
waters. Although criminal penalties exist, 
in practice the weight given to these rul~s 
in civil actions arising out of coUisions IS 
proba!bly a: more ·effective inducement to 
abide by the rules. Routing schemes are 

compulsory for all ships within ports and 
other British waters and some progress 
is 1being made by IMCO 1n devisingschemes for areas presently beyondnational jurisdiction. Safety of navigation 
~s further protected by the requirement in 
the Coastal Protection Act, 1949 that any 
works detrimental to navigation under-
taken below the high water mark must 
he authorised by the minister ; the lic-
ensing of installations on the continental 
shelf fulfills a simllar function. 
. Because most of this legislation has 
grown up in response to specific demands, 
rather than as part of a comprehensivelegal regime, deficiencies exist in relation 
to the demands which pres·ent and pred-
ictable future uses make on the law. 
There are anomalies arising from the way 
in which the Statutes are drafted. For 
example, under the Continental Shelf Act, 
1964 and the Mineral Workings (Off-
shore Installations) Act, 1971, British law 
is extended not only to the installations 
themselves but also (perhaps inconsist-
ently with international law) to the 500 
metre safety zones which surround them, 
whereas the powers of police consta'hles 
are only extended to the installations 
themselves. Again, although the l!erri-
torial Waters Jurisdiction Act, 1878 ex-
tended the whole of the criminal law re-
lating to indictable offences to the terri-
torial sea, there has been no such blanket 
extension of summary offences, except 
to installations, under the 1971 Act, and, 
apparently, to areas designated as shell-
fisheries under the Sea Fisheries (Shell-
fish) Act, 1967. 
The practice of providing wide jurisdic-
tion over areas and persons, going far 
bevond that permissi·ble under inter-
nationa1 law but securing de facto com-
pliance with international law by requir-
ing the consent of a minister ·or the DPP 
to any prosecution, may be thought un-
desirable. The power to deal with ship-
ping casualties has a1ready been noted 
and a more spectactular example is found 
in the Mineral Working (Offshore Instal-
lations) Act, 1971. under which UK law is 
extended to installations " notwithstand-
ing that thev are for the time being in 
transit ", !Without limiting this either to 
29 
British installations or to installations 
over the British shelf. Although no abuse 
has occurred, and the Courts would inter-
pret such a provision, wherever possuble, 
in a manner consistent with international 
law, it would be better to draft Statutes 
w1th greater precision and more clearly 
defined powers. 
Many examples of enigmatic draJftingexist, hut more important are the prob-
lems arising from the failure of the law 
satisfactorily to accommodate certain 
uses of the coastal zone. Fish farming 
furnishes a topical example. Although 
the necessary technology exists, the law 
does not provide sufficient protection for 
the farmer to attract investment. Under 
existing law, the public has a right of 
navigation and fishing in tidal waters, and 
a right of user of the foreshore ancillary 
to those rights. Even if permission for the 
building of an offshore enclosure is 
granted under the Coast Protection Act, 
1949, the farmer would have no legalright to interfere with these public rights. 
Existing conservation measures limitingthe sizes of fish which may be caught 
would prevent him from catching the 
young fish necessary to stock the fishery, 
and even if this problem were avoided, tt 
is unclear how far the farmer would 
have the rights of an owner over the fish, 
so as to enaJble him to protect them from 
theft and damage, for instanc·e, or from 
pollution. Many other legal obstacles con-
£ront the potential fish farmer in the 
fields of planning law, rating practice, 
laws protecting certain predatory animals 
and so on, the combined effect of which 
is to deter the development of a poten-
tially most important domestic food 
source. 
There is no statutory tort comparable to 
that in the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollu-
tion) Act, 1971 governing oil discharges 
from ships, ,relating to the escape of oil 
from installations, nor is there a satis-
factory s·cheme o:f compulsory liability 
insurance-although the oil industry has 
volun:tarily esta·blished a fund, OPOL, to 
provide compensation for poUution on the 
basis of strict Habi1ity. Suitable methods 
for assessing the damage caused by pollu-
tion for the purposes of legal actions 
compulsory for all ships within ports and 
other British waters and some progress 
is 1being made by IMCO 1n devisingschemes for areas presently beyondnational jurisdiction. Safety of navigation 
~s further protected by the requirement in 
the Coastal Protection Act, 1949 that any 
works detrimental to navigation under-
taken below the high water mark must 
he authorised by the minister ; the lic-
ensing of installations on the continental 
shelf fulfills a simllar function. 
. Because most of this legislation has 
grown up in response to specific demands, 
rather than as part of a comprehensivelegal regime, deficiencies exist in relation 
to the demands which pres·ent and pred-
ictable future uses make on the law. 
There are anomalies arising from the way 
in which the Statutes are drafted. For 
example, under the Continental Shelf Act, 
1964 and the Mineral Workings (Off-
shore Installations) Act, 1971, British law 
is extended not only to the installations 
themselves but also (perhaps inconsist-
ently with international law) to the 500 
metre safety zones which surround them, 
whereas the powers of police consta'hles 
are only extended to the installations 
themselves. Again, although the l!erri-
torial Waters Jurisdiction Act, 1878 ex-
tended the whole of the criminal law re-
lating to indictable offences to the terri-
torial sea, there has been no such blanket 
extension of summary offences, except 
to installations, under the 1971 Act, and, 
apparently, to areas designated as shell-
fisheries under the Sea Fisheries (Shell-
fish) Act, 1967. 
The practice of providing wide jurisdic-
tion over areas and persons, going far 
bevond that permissi·ble under inter-
nationa1 law but securing de facto com-
pliance with international law by requir-
ing the consent of a minister ·or the DPP 
to any prosecution, may be thought un-
desirable. The power to deal with ship-
ping casualties has a1ready been noted 
and a more spectactular example is found 
in the Mineral Working (Offshore Instal-
lations) Act, 1971. under which UK law is 
extended to installations " notwithstand-
ing that thev are for the time being in 
transit ", !Without limiting this either to 
29 
British installations or to installations 
over the British shelf. Although no abuse 
has occurred, and the Courts would inter-
pret such a provision, wherever possuble, 
in a manner consistent with international 
law, it would be better to draft Statutes 
w1th greater precision and more clearly 
defined powers. 
Many examples of enigmatic draJftingexist, hut more important are the prob-
lems arising from the failure of the law 
satisfactorily to accommodate certain 
uses of the coastal zone. Fish farming 
furnishes a topical example. Although 
the necessary technology exists, the law 
does not provide sufficient protection for 
the farmer to attract investment. Under 
existing law, the public has a right of 
navigation and fishing in tidal waters, and 
a right of user of the foreshore ancillary 
to those rights. Even if permission for the 
building of an offshore enclosure is 
granted under the Coast Protection Act, 
1949, the farmer would have no legalright to interfere with these public rights. 
Existing conservation measures limitingthe sizes of fish which may be caught 
would prevent him from catching the 
young fish necessary to stock the fishery, 
and even if this problem were avoided, tt 
is unclear how far the farmer would 
have the rights of an owner over the fish, 
so as to enaJble him to protect them from 
theft and damage, for instanc·e, or from 
pollution. Many other legal obstacles con-
£ront the potential fish farmer in the 
fields of planning law, rating practice, 
laws protecting certain predatory animals 
and so on, the combined effect of which 
is to deter the development of a poten-
tially most important domestic food 
source. 
There is no statutory tort comparable to 
that in the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollu-
tion) Act, 1971 governing oil discharges 
from ships, ,relating to the escape of oil 
from installations, nor is there a satis-
factory s·cheme o:f compulsory liability 
insurance-although the oil industry has 
volun:tarily esta·blished a fund, OPOL, to 
provide compensation for poUution on the 
basis of strict Habi1ity. Suitable methods 
for assessing the damage caused by pollu-
tion for the purposes of legal actions 

have to be evolved and the marine poUut'ion 
:legislation of the usA which contain 
some useful provisions to facilitate actions 
against pollutors, would repay close examination. 
The ob1igation on the operators 
of installations not to " interfere unjustifiably 
with navigation or fishing in the 
waters of the licensed areas or with the 
·conservation of the living resources of 
the sea" is too vague to fulfil the obligation 
of the law to protect other users of 
the sea, and a provision, such as alreadyexists to protect the interests of employees 
working on installations, to " comply with 
any instructions from time to time given 
by the minister " could usefu'lly be adopted, 
pending the defini'tion of obligationstowards other users. Indeed, in matters 
such as this where there is little or no 
experience of the dangers involved, this 
may be more convenient than legislation, 
allowing the rapid and flexible implementation 
of measures and their application 
to particular installations. There is no 
reason why, given the will to enforce 
such prmrisions in licences, they should 
not be as effective as obligations laid 

down by statute. 
On the international level, progress is 
being made in the regulation of pollution, 
but normally several years elaps·e before 
any convention agreed on comes into 
force, and the punishment of violators 
has to date remained exclusively with the 
flag State-a serious shortcoming given 
.that about 30 per cent of the world tanker 
fleet sails under the flags of countries with 
which it has no genuine link, and a high 
proportion of other vessels are similarly 
beyond the effective control of their flag 
State. Likewise, the lack .of coastal State 
jurisdiction over ships beyond the nar·
row territo·rial sea makes the effective 
regulation of navigation unacC'eptablydifficult. Solution of these and other problems 
will be facilitated if, as seems most 
likely, the concept of the Exclusive Economic 
Zone (EEZ) is adopted by the present 
UN Conference on the Law of the Sea. 
The details of this concept are far from 
~being clear-there is, for example, a wide 
divergence of views on the precise extent 
of a State's right to regulate pollution 
in the zone and to interfere with 
navigation. However, it may rea~onably 

be as·sumed that an EEZ will give coastal 
States rights to control the conservation 
and exploitation of the living and nonliving 
resources and also to prosecuteviolations of pollution regulations, within 
the zone. There are ~many other rights 
which are likely to be included in the 
EEZ, such as some control over marine 
research One other important activity, 
navigation, has been less extensively discussed 
in connection with the EEZ. but it 
is likely that, by the time a binding 
treaty emerges from the Conference,
States will he able, at least in areas presenting 
difficulties for navigation or which 
are, for one reason or another, particularly 
vulnerable, or " fragile " to enforce 
traffic routing schemes and perh·aps 
to make certain types of equipmenJt or 
performance compulsory. 


This will permit the solution of several 
outstanding problems. For instance, the : 
question of jurisdiction over persons, · 
ships and installations engaged in exploiting 
the continental shelf, presently very , 
confused, could be settled. With the wider 
jurisdiction over waters above the shelf 
allowed in an EEZ, it will be easier to 
justify the assumption of jurisdictionover, say, foreign ships servicing rigs and 
pipelines in the UK sector, of which there 
are a1bout 200 at present, than under current 
international law. Present British 
policy in ~CLOS 111 is .to claim sover-. 
eign economic rights to the edge of the 
shelf where this is beyond 200 nautical 
miles (the continental shelf and the EEZ 
would then not be coextensive-a most 
confusing and undesirruble suggestion). 

The difficulties of arresting large ships in 
the open sea, even if this were thoughtdesirable, are almost ~nsupera:ble but since 
it is quite possible that a ship violating 
pollution and other regulations will not 
render itself subject to the coastal State's 
jurisdiction by entering its ports. Port 
State Jurisdiction (under which an 
offending ship can ~be prosecuted at the 
request of the injured state by any state 
whose port it enters) would ·be an invaluable 
suoplement to the existingcoastal and flag State iurisdiction for the 
control of shipping. This requires international 
agreement, ·but the idea has 


already gained widespread support.
Fundamental ·to the idea of sea use planning 
is the treatment of Britain's marine 
resources as an integrated whole in the 
context of indivisible seas. The revision 
of the law which is necessary at the 
moment, that which will be necessitated 
by the adoption of an EEZ, and the development 
of sea use policy within the EEC, 
pr.ovide an opportunity for integratingthe law governing these resources, both 
domestically and !fegionally. It would 
be better to codify the law, rather than 
add to the complicated web of existinglegislation. A carefUl and comprehensivestudy should be made of the impact of 
new techniques and likely developments 
on the law. Such an exercise would permit 
the rationalisation of responsibilities 
at present divided between too manydifferent bodies and governments-for instance, 
in the regulation of pollution and 
navigational aids-and the dovetailing of 
different regulations applying to the same 
area and often to the same activities 
within that area. This would not onlyfacilitate the task of individuals planning 
offshore developments, but would clarify 
the relationship between the various bod· 
ies, local, national and regional, respon


sible for controlling the zone. 


7. the civil power at s·ea 
Elizabeth Young, Peter Fricke 

When Britain acquires an Exclusive 
Economic Zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical 
miles, either as a result of agreement in 
UNCLOS UI or of unilateral action following 
the exam pie of other North 
Atlantic States, British national jurisdiction 
will operate over some half a million 
square kilometres of sea surface, together 
with the waters and the sea bed 
and subsoil below. 

Early in 1975, the Minister of State at 
the Ministry of Defence, William 
Rodgers, announced that a small fleet of 
fishery protec~ion type vessels had been 
ordered, whose task was to be the protection 
of the North Sea oil and gas installations 
from sabotage or terrorist 
attack. Four fixed wing aircraft would 
complete the force, whose duty will be 
to " act in support of the civil author-
ities "---,by which is normally meant the 
police. Frank Juqd, Under Secretary for 
the Navy, has sine~ described the five 
vessels as the " Panda cars of ,the North 
Sea " and their rol,e as that of " the 
policeman on the beat ". This has been 
the first practical indication that Whitehall 
has begun to understand the implications, 
for the Civil Authorities, of the 
new offshor.e economic zones. 

·Gov·ernment has in fact several different 
kinds of function beyond territorial 
waters, where domestic arrangementsapply. These offshore functions need to 
be distinguished fairly carefully. First 
there is the traditional naval function, 
the fundamental sovereign right of a 
state to deploy, in, on, and over, the openseas, whatever it sees fit in the way of 
naval or other forc·es (including of course 
research vessels and equipment of all 
kinds, civil and military). These rights are 
formalised in the 1958 Convention on the 
High Seas. Then there are the various 
functions relating to fisheries: protectionfunctions and regulatory functions within 
Britain's own fishery zones, and within 
the areas of the fishery Commissions that 
Britain par-ticipates in such as the North 
East and the North West Atlantic Fishery 
Commissions. Finally there is a group of 
comparatively new functions, which derive 
explicitly from Britain's right under 
the 1958 Convention on the Continental 

Shelf, exclusively to explore and exploitthe economic resources of the sea bed and 
subsoil of the cont1nental margin. Three 
roles can he distinguished: the defensive, 
the regulatory and administrative, and the 
constabular. These aTe the "right and 
duty" to pr.otect the resources themselves 
and the installations and equipment 
required for their exploitation ; the 
"right and duty" to administer and regulate 
exploration and exploitation and to , 
provide various kinds of services ; and 
finally the " right and duty " to enforce 
the law and to maintain the Queen's 
Peace among those occupied in exploration 
and exploitation. When 200 nautical 
mile EEZs come into effect, the fishery 
protection duties will merge with the 
other regulatory and consta:bular duties. 

The role of the navy, responsible as it is 
for the defence of British interests ; 
against the Queen's enemies, will remain · 
unchanged. I.t is the civil power on whom 
vast new demands are about to be made. , 
At present the Government's civil sea · 
going capability is extremely small and 
rather oddly dispersed among · semiindependant 
and independant bodies: 
there is the Lighthouse Conference, under 
arm's length control by the Department 
of Trade and consisting of the Corporation 
of Trinity House, the Commissioners 
of Northern Lights, and the Commissioners 
of Irish Lights. Trinity House, 
for instance, operates five tenders for 
buoy work and one helicopter for lighthouse 
relief. It also has 98 launches of 
various sorts with which to .perform its 
pilotage job. The Board of Customs and 
Excise (statutory and at arm's length from 
the Treasury) owns three unarmed revenue 
cutters, which can stay at sea for 
14 days. The Crown Estates Commissioners, 
responsible for licensing aU offshore 
dredging operations, depends on 
other parties, particularly the District 
Inspectors of Fisheries, to check at sea 
that license conditions are being kept-
Trinity House helps, so do the Coastguard, 
the dredging trade itself and loc~l 
fishermen. Occasionally the cEc's civil 
engineer goes to sea in a boat, but he 
charters it sp·ecially. Mostly the work. of 
checking is done ashore--at landmgpoints and by watching the books-but 


the scientists from the MAFF Burnham on 
Crouch laboratory keep an eye on the 
effects at sea of the dredging operations. 
The Coastgua;rd, under the Departmentof Trade, has no sea going capCLbility,
but can call on the services and on the 
entirely non-governmental (but whollyintegrated) Royal National Lifeboat 
Institution, which maintains 135 offshore 
lifeboat stations. The Coastgua:rd also 
. has a contraot with British Airways Helicopters 
Ltd for a fully manned and medically 
equipped helicopter, for long range 
rescue or evacuation. When the Department 
of Energy's inspectors--the petroleum 
inspectorate, the inspectors of 
diving-want to go about their business, 
. they solicit a lift on the company launch 
or helicopter ; the Department itself has 
no sea going transport. The Chief Con


. stabie of Grampian, the police officer responsible 
for law and order on most of 
the rigs and installations, has to find his 
way as best he can, ·even though it maybe well to the West of the Shetlands. 

There are also the few (five or six)
naval vessels seconded for fishery protection, 
which turned out insufficient Cl!t 
the time of the last cod war with Iceland, 
and one of which is nOIW being diverted 

·to oil installation protection duties. 

Beyond this, there are some 50 ocean 
going and coasta;l research vessels, including 
those of the Hydrogapher of the 
Navy, but these are not immediately engaged 
on regulatory ·business nor, while 
they are at sea, are any of them strictly 
spealci.ng providing a Government service, 
though they do of course, by their monitoring 
and their investigations, contribute 
to the ev·entual provision of services, 
and they take part in search and rescue 
operations when needed. 

In general, it is far cheaper to operateany reguiatory ·Of constabulary system on 
shore and this must always be the first 
· choice. But there are c·ertaJin things which 
can only be done at sea and the Government's 
aim must now be to have a sea 
going constabulary that can perform as 
many offshore tasks as possible, as flexibly 
and as cost effectively as possible,
and in full ·expectation of a 200 nautical 

mile EEZ being established 'bY 1980. 
What are the tasks and what forces are 
required to perform them? First there 
has to be a speciaHsed force to deal with 
crime offshore. It must be mobile but 1t 
need not be very large; it should have the· 
powers presently exercised by the chief 
constable of the region in which a crime 
occurs. A limited patrol force based at 
centres already serving the offshore 
industry and the major fishing ports and 
sea ports in the UK would require small 

patrol craft and one or two long range 
h~licopters. 

The task of patrolling for infringement 
of traffic and resource managementschemes and all other forms of offshore 
regulation is going to increase substantially 
over the next few years. The management 
of traffic s·eparation schemes in 
the Dover Straits, :the North Sea, the 
Celtic Sea and off Lands End requiresboth shore bases (equipped with radar 
surveyance) and vessels and aircraft for 
observation and general patrol functions. 
In addition vessels will be needed to 
patr-ol the much enlarged fishing grounds 
and to work closely with our own fishing 
fleet and with other fleets with fishing 
rights. Licensed access will be the norm 
instead of the exception (only named 
British vessels are allowed to fish within 
the waters claimed by Iceland three years 
ago; this is an unusual-though sensible 
-arrangement). With sovereign rights 
over fisheries belonging to the UK, the 
fishery protection task will expand very 
substantially indeed into positive fishery 
management, and enforcement on all 

comers. 

Dredging for sand and gravel is necessarily 
on the increase as available supplies 
on land are running out ; the industry 
will have to be ever more closely monitored 
at sea. Land based pollution is 
increasingly to be controlled; so is pollution 
from ships and f·rom offshore installations. 
The monitoring wi11 increasingly 
have to take place at sea. New 
diving regulations, new rules concerning 
industrial safety, health and welfare 
are being introduced. The oil companies 
are now planning a joint fire fightingservice, with the approval of coastal 


34 
states, which will require the cooperationof any offshore constabulary. Similarly 
for accident reporting and investigatingand for search and rescue services and 
operations. The Labour Party NEe's 
International Committee has alreadyapproved a study group's proposal for 
the licensing of all major shipping. For 
vessels dangerous either by reason of their 
size, their means of propulsion or the 
nature of their cargo, licensing must 
very soon come. (In 1973 eleven con-
tainers of " dangerous goods " were lost 
overboard in British coastal waters ; in 
1974 the number was 21.) The proportionof unidentified oii spills in British terri-
torial and coastal waters remains un-
acceptGtJble, as the tables below indicate. 
Only an increased presence at sea, 
coupled with some system of oil-tagging 
which will make detect ion more likelywill bring these figures down to the irre-
ducible minimum. 
As uses multiply, so do regulations and 
so do the responsibilities of the civil 
power to patrol, monitor, detect infringe-
ments, stop, board, inspect, arrest, and 
prosecute. The minimum number of ves-
sels able to police an EEZ of 200 nautical 
roUes on the ·right kind of scale would 
probably be of the order of 14 for the 
fishery patrol and investigation task. 
These vessels should be of a similar size 
to the Jura-type now on order, and 
capable of sea-keepirig with the fisheryfleets in the worst weather. They would 
be about 200 feet long, equipped with 
the latest position-finding and radar de-
tection equipment and able to maintain 
a sustained speed in emergency of 20 
knots. They should be provided with 
landing platforms for helicopters but 
would not normally carry one. Theyshould also have an under water capa-
bility, given the under water vulnerabilityof oil and gas installations and pipelines.
Normal cruising speed would be abou 
14 knots. 
For patrqlling in traffic lanes and various 
other oivil enforcement tasks, a fleet o~ 
light patrol vessels 90 to 100 feet long, . 
would be necessary .to observe traffic , 
movements and other activities and fon 
rapid action in emergencies. A cruising 
speed of 14 to 16 knots would be enough,: 
but the vessels should be capable of a 
sustained maximum speed well in excess 
of 20 knots. They would be similar in 
type to the us coast guard inshore cutters 
and would be· deployed in the majon 
traffic scheme areas and where activity 
CONFIRMED OIL SPILLS IN UK TERRITORIAL WATERS 
caused by caused by spills from spills from total 
UK ships non UK land unidentified 
ships installations sources 
1969 (July-November) 5 8 3 46 62 
1970 10 8 1 89 108 
1971 14 22 2 88 126 
1972 11 9 4 81 105 
1973 5 20 5 48 78 
1974 6 6 2 53 67 
CONFIRMED OIL SPILLS OUTSIDE UK TERRITORIAL WATERS 
spills from spills from spills from 
UK ships non UK unidentified 
ships source 
1969 (July-November) 5 12 29 46 
1970 5 17 55 77 
1971 7 26 46 79 
1972 2 14 44 60 
1973 2 18 34 54 
1974 5 21 10 36 
Source : all figures were kindly provided by Viktor Sebek, Secretary of the Advisory 
Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea. 
34 
states, which will require the cooperationof any offshore constabulary. Similarly 
for accident reporting and investigatingand for search and rescue services and 
operations. The Labour Party NEe's 
International Committee has alreadyapproved a study group's proposal for 
the licensing of all major shipping. For 
vessels dangerous either by reason of their 
size, their means of propulsion or the 
nature of their cargo, licensing must 
very soon come. (In 1973 eleven con-
tainers of " dangerous goods " were lost 
overboard in British coastal waters ; in 
1974 the number was 21.) The proportionof unidentified oii spills in British terri-
torial and coastal waters remains un-
acceptGtJble, as the tables below indicate. 
Only an increased presence at sea, 
coupled with some system of oil-tagging 
which will make detect ion more likelywill bring these figures down to the irre-
ducible minimum. 
As uses multiply, so do regulations and 
so do the responsibilities of the civil 
power to patrol, monitor, detect infringe-
ments, stop, board, inspect, arrest, and 
prosecute. The minimum number of ves-
sels able to police an EEZ of 200 nautical 
roUes on the ·right kind of scale would 
probably be of the order of 14 for the 
fishery patrol and investigation task. 
These vessels should be of a similar size 
to the Jura-type now on order, and 
capable of sea-keepirig with the fisheryfleets in the worst weather. They would 
be about 200 feet long, equipped with 
the latest position-finding and radar de-
tection equipment and able to maintain 
a sustained speed in emergency of 20 
knots. They should be provided with 
landing platforms for helicopters but 
would not normally carry one. Theyshould also have an under water capa-
bility, given the under water vulnerabilityof oil and gas installations and pipelines.
Normal cruising speed would be abou 
14 knots. 
For patrqlling in traffic lanes and various 
other oivil enforcement tasks, a fleet o~ 
light patrol vessels 90 to 100 feet long, . 
would be necessary .to observe traffic , 
movements and other activities and fon 
rapid action in emergencies. A cruising 
speed of 14 to 16 knots would be enough,: 
but the vessels should be capable of a 
sustained maximum speed well in excess 
of 20 knots. They would be similar in 
type to the us coast guard inshore cutters 
and would be· deployed in the majon 
traffic scheme areas and where activity 
CONFIRMED OIL SPILLS IN UK TERRITORIAL WATERS 
caused by caused by spills from spills from total 
UK ships non UK land unidentified 
ships installations sources 
1969 (July-November) 5 8 3 46 62 
1970 10 8 1 89 108 
1971 14 22 2 88 126 
1972 11 9 4 81 105 
1973 5 20 5 48 78 
1974 6 6 2 53 67 
CONFIRMED OIL SPILLS OUTSIDE UK TERRITORIAL WATERS 
spills from spills from spills from 
UK ships non UK unidentified 
ships source 
1969 (July-November) 5 12 29 46 
1970 5 17 55 77 
1971 7 26 46 79 
1972 2 14 44 60 
1973 2 18 34 54 
1974 5 21 10 36 
Source : all figures were kindly provided by Viktor Sebek, Secretary of the Advisory 
Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea. 

is dense in the waters around the UK. 
For the offshore oil protection job, with 
a little fishery protection on the side, the 
Ministry of Defence now have on order 
five Jura-type pat·rol vessels, approximately 
200 feet in length and 900 tons 
gross tonnage. These vessels will not 
carry helicopters (though capable of receiving 
stores and personnel from helicopters). 
A study carried out for the 
United StaJtes Coast Guard by the Centre 
for Naval Analys·es in 1973 concluded 
that hydrofoil craft, with their high speed 
capaJbilities and if equip,ped with proper 
r~dar and ·electronic navigation aids,
would be more effective than conventional 
ships and aircraft in ca,rrying out 
fishery protection and other tasks-
identification, pursuit, and inspection of 
possible violators. But hydrofoils can 
operate successfully only in moderate 
seas and are expensive to operate and 
maintain. A force of vessels of the Jura 
type, backed up by helicopters and fixed 
wing aircraft (and perhaps hydrofoils) 
should certainly be generally effective. A 
mixed force of this kind together with :t 
number of vessels of the us coast guard 
offshore cutter or corvette type would 
provide an adequate coverage of all British 
coastal waters. A minimum of 16 
corvettes would be needed to maintain 
a proper relationship between vessels on 
station and those on training operations 
or undergoing maintenance. This would 
ensure that at least one vessel was within 
three hours, and two further craft within 
eight hours, steaming time of any incident 
soot. Vessels and helicopters of the 
right kind are comm·ercially available. 

The Hydrographer's Department, as a 
collector of survey and meteorologicaldata, has been and will continue to be 
severely stretched. Under normal patrol 
conditions it should be possible for constabulary 
vess·els to gather data and to 
conduct sonar and sea bed sampling ooerations 
without undue ioediment to their 
other duties. They should be equipped to 
do so, both for the Hydrographer and for 
any other interested party. 

The question remains: is this force to be 
the embodiment at sea of the civi~I 
power? Is it to be naval power acting 

" on behalf ", or " in support ", of the 
civil power ? Is it simply to be a branch 
of the navy ? There are many considerations, 
and decisions-though not discusion-
which should await the Minister 
for Maritime Affairs. It can be argued 
that only the navy now fully understands 
the problems of keeping the peace at 
sea ; and this is certainly so. On the other 
hand, it can be argued that what Britain 
does in her seas (the most heavily and 
diversely used seas in the world) witl 
be carefully watched, and will influence 
what is done elsewhere, and that we 
.do not want EEZs worldwide administered 
by the armed forces. This also is the 
case. Certainly we do not want East 
West tensions-Warsaw pact versus NATO 
-introduced into the already complex 

business of keeping the peace in the North 
West European Seas. In Helsinki terms, 
this is an entirely internal affair. 

The Ministry of Defence of course is no 
more equipped to conduct sea use plan-
ning-an activity that requires political 
experience as well as professional expert-
is·e in its administrators-than the Department 
of the Environment is equipped to 
take police action in the saHy wastes of 
the North Sea. Cannot the \roles of 
planner and enforcer be separated? Here,
domestically, is probably ·the nub of the 
matter, and the answer surely has to be 
that it cannot. The suggestion made 
earlier that the Hom·e Secretary becom·e 
Secretary of State for Home and Maritime 
Affairs derives from the fact that 
he is the only civil minister legitimately 
empowered to deploy force. 

There is also-but this could well be the 
subject matter of a whole further pamphlet-
the question of regional coooeration. 
We are talking aJbout the indivisible 
sea and in practice we must approach 
our shared problems and tasks cooperatively 
with our neighbours (referred to 
·in chapter two). This wiH be altogether 
·easier if, as far as enforcement goes, all 
the North West European coastal states 
dec·ide that these are civil, not military, 
tasks. 


8. postscript:
recommendations 
Elizabeth Young 

The authors of these several essays have 
each approached the central topic-the 
government of offshore Britain-independently 
and from a particular point of 
view. In each chapter, one or more recommendations 
hcwe been advanced and 
in turn, implicitly or explicitly, supported 
in the other chapters. Cumulatively the 
recommendations amount to the foHowmg: 


1. The appointplent of a Sec-retary of 
State for Ma:ritime Affairs, with specific 
political responsibility for the generalconduct of offshore government and for 
the development and practice of sea use 
planning ( cha:pter two). 
2. The recognition and acceptance, in 
aU offshore policy making, of the organic 
unity of the seas (chapter three). 
3. T<he coordination and orchestration 
of a maritime resea:rch strategy and a 
training programme geared to foreseeable 
maritime requirements (chapter four). 
4. The developm·ent of the techniqueof the sea use structure map; and of a 
Sea Pse Planning Authority, coupled 
IWith a system of public enquiry and a 
specialist inspectorate (chapters three and 
four). 
5. ·The codification and ·extension of 
British domestic law as it relates to offshore 
activity in gen·eral and to fish farming 
in particular. As often as possible,
this should be in concert with neighbouring 
states, with the aim of establishinga regional legal framework (chapter six). 
6. The continuing promotion of improvement 
in the international law of the 
sea, both in UNCLOS and elsewhere, to 
keep it abrea~t of technological and political 
developments and of our understanding 
of the oceans and seas (chapters 
one and six). 
7. The setting up of a oivilian offshore 
consta!bulary (perhaps in regionally cooperative 
form) to perform the various 
regulatory and policing roles of the civil 
power at sea, and the promotion of a 
regional, civilian, sea management regime 
in the putative EEZs of the countflies of 
North West Europe (chapters two and 
seven). 

Our overall conclusion is that it is no 
longer right to leave the development of 
what is now the country's most important 
resource----our newest and perhapslast opportunity-to the haphazard results 
of the present administrative and 
lega:l chaos. The North Sea is not a honey 
pot, to be consum·ed onc·e and for all. A 
new system of offshore government is 
now setting itself up and it is our belief 
that comprehensive sea use planning will 
provide better results for the British 
people than the continued operation of 
the present commercial and bureaucratic 
scramble. There is no time to lose. 

,, 




fabian society 


The Fabian Society exists to further 
socialist education and research. It ts 
affiliated to the Labour Party, both 
nationally and locally, and embraces all 
shades of Socialist opinion within its 
ranks-left, right and centre. 

Since 1884 the FaJbian Society has enrolled 
thoughtful socialists who are prepared 
to discuss the essential questions 
of democratic socialism and relate them 

, 
to practical plans for building socialism 
in a changing world. 

1Beyond this the Society has no collective 
policy. It puts forward no resolutions of 
a political character, but it is not an 
, organisation of armchair socialists. Its 
members are active in their Labour Parties, 
Trade Unions and Co-operatives. 
They are representative of the la:bour 
movement, practical people concerned to 
study and discuss problems that matter. 

The Society is organised nationally and 
locally. The national Society, directed by 
an elected Executive Committee, publishes 
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Enquiries about membership should be 
sent to the General Secretary, Fabian 
Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, 
SW1H 9BN ; telephone 01-930 3077. 

Cover design by Dick Leadbetter. Printed 
by Civic Press Limited (Tu), Civic 
Street, Glasgow, G4 9RH. 

ISBN 7163 0437 6 

the authors 


Elizabeth Young is a writer speoialising 
on arms control and maritime issues. 
She wrote with Brian Johnson the 
Fabian pamphlet The Law of the Sea 
(1973) and is the author of Farewell to 
Arms Control? (Penguin, 1973). She is 
a member of the Labour Party NEe's 
Study Group on the Law of the Sea. 

Peter Fricke as well as being a professional 
seafarer, lectures at the University 
of Wales Insbitute of Science and Technology 
in the Department of Maritime 
Studies. He is currently on sabbatical 
leave undertaking research while at sea 
and will subsequently be at Wood's Hole 
Oceanic Institution. Massachusetts. He is 
the author of various articles on maritime 
sociology and is on the Labour 
Party NEe's Study Group on the Law of 
the Sea. 

Robin Grnve-White is the Assistant Secretary 
of the Council for the Protection 
of Rural England. He has a PPE degreefrom Oxford and was formerly a freelance 
writer. He was a contributor to 

The Politics of Physical Resources 

(Penguin, 1975). 

Vaughan Lowe is a lecturer in Law at 
UWIST and is a member of the Centre 
for Marine Law and Policy there. 

Hance Smith lectures in Geography in 
The Department of Humanities at Newcastle 
upon Tyne Polytechnic. He has a 
PhD in Geography frrom Aberdeen where 
his thesis was on the Economic Development 
orf the Shet·land Islands. He is a 
contributor to Scotland and Oil (OJiverand Boyd, forthcoming) on the maritime 
geography of the oil industry, and has 
written an article " Environment of the 
Offshore Oi'l Industry in Scottish Waters: 
a Review" to be published in Maritime 
Studies and Management (VWIST, January, 
1976). 

The authors would like to thank Elizabeth 
Fricke and Viktor Sebek for their 
help in the production of this pamphlet. 


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