Canadas deadline is Friday to apply to a United Nations commission for exclusive rights to ... another 1.7 million square kilometres of Arctic seafloor ... under the Convention on the Law of the Sea ... The lines on the map will have been drawn by scores of scientists working everywhere from Ottawa labs to ice camps off the northern shores of Ellesmere Island, peering under the stormy black waters to discern the shape and composition of sea floor ... The effort required more than a dozen icebreaker voyages, as well as trips by helicopters, airplanes and an unmanned, remote-controlled submarine that spent days under the ice. With the co-operation of three Arctic neighbours — Denmark, Russia and the United States — more than 18,000 kilometres of sea-floor data was collected ... The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea governs which nations exert what kinds of controls over their surrounding waters. In addition to the 22-kilometre territorial waters and the 370-kilometre exclusive economic zones, coastal countries are allowed to claim additional sea floor if they can show their continental shelf extends beyond the economic zone. ... The U.S. has not signed the convention, but has agreed to follow most of its articles. cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-to-file-arctic-seafloor-claim-this-week-1.2447166
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 04:39:15 +0000
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