Stuff You Should Know - Who owns the oceans?

Episode Date: March 10, 2009

International waters cover 71% of the Earth's surface, and a separate set of laws and regulations govern human activity on the seas. But who actually owns the oceans? Listen and find out in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Our, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's Chuck. Oh, Chuck. And we are happy to be here. Agreed. That was terrible, Chuck, but terrible fun. You're the one that started it. No, I'm just kidding. All right. This is Stuff You Should Know, aka the happy pirate hour. Right? Although we're not pirates and these things never run an hour. No, true. But Chuck, the reason I said arg is

because I wanted to know if you knew about these pirates in Somalia. Have you heard about this? I read a little bit about those the summer, or was it in the fall? Oh, it's still going on, but yeah, this past summer and fall, they were at their peak. They captured $100 million dollars worth of Saudi oil. They captured a cargo vessel with 30 Russian tanks on it. That's amazing. They've been making millions of dollars holding these things for ransom. They're getting increasingly sophisticated. The British Navy went head to head with a small fishing boat of 10 of them. And after they finally captured these guys, they went on board and there were assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers. These guys are like modern-day pirates. In a weird way,

it's kind of cool, but at the same time, they're pirates. They should send Bill Murray. Did you see the Life Aquatic? Yes. Pirates, modern pirates in that movie. I had forgotten about that aspect. That's what I picture, actually. Really? Yeah, I bet that's kind of what they're like. It's not the days of the skull and crossbones. No, not anymore. There's very few peg legs aboard these ships, I imagine. But actually, Africa has long been a place for piracy. I mean, this goes back centuries. Actually, red beards, they were actually two brothers, the brothers Barbarossa. Really? They established piracy in Northern Africa. They were Turks and they were battling the Spanish Christians across the way. And there was a lot of really evil deeds done to one another

from both sides, actually. I bet. I'm a black-beard guy. Oh, yeah. Didn't he bury his booty in the outer banks? Maybe. Not too far away. I know that Discovery Channel showed treasure quests, like all these modern-day treasure hunters. It's gotten much more sophisticated, and they're starting to find a lot of these shipwrecks with tons of loot. That's great. Billions of dollars. So finding old pirates as sophisticated as modern pirates are, note the correlation check. Although correlation is not causation check. That's what I learned. Okay, so these pirates were really having it free and easy, and they were very successful. And one of the reasons why is because nobody

wanted to capture them because they didn't know who would prosecute them. Well, right. They're acting like they own the oceans. Well, number one, their country doesn't have a functioning central government right now and hasn't since the 90s. Right? Yeah, that doesn't matter. But number two, as you said, and I'm so sorry to step all over your segue because it was so beautiful. Do you want to say it again? Josh, they're acting as if they own the oceans. You know what, Chuck? They do, in a sense. Right. And so do you. So do you, Chuck. And so do all of you out there in podcast land. We all own the oceans. It is the heritage of all mankind as the UN puts it. Yes. We'll get to that a little

later on. But yeah, so these Somali pirates are being shuffled around from nation to nation. Kenya is prosecuting a lot of them. But really, it's not clear whether anybody has jurisdiction over them. Right. Right. But yeah, so we all own the oceans. Yeah, in a way, sure. Right. And the waters off of Somalia have been declared the high seas, which makes them international waters. Right. Which means everybody owns them. There are portions of the ocean that people, or that not everyone owns, right? Right. So you want to talk a little bit about the history. All of this is just so cryptic. Let's really get down to the nuts and bolts here. Sure. They've figured this out over the course of the past, what, a couple of hundred years? Well, there've

been treaties dating back to the ancient Romans. Oh, wow. Well, yeah, but they were very localized in regional. This is like the oceans. But yeah, that's a couple of hundred years. Yes. I guess the first one was the freedom of the seas doctrine, aka the law of the sea. Right. Not to be confused with the custom of the sea, which was basically protocol for cannibalism during a shipwreck. And not to be confused with chicken of the sea. Which is tuna. And not, yeah, it's not chicken. Nice one. Yeah. So the freedom of the seas doctrine was kind of the first one and basically that granted exclusive rights for a three mile buffer of ocean that abutted your coastline. Right. And we still have those. This is called territorial seas. Right. But it's expanded quite

a bit since then. It has. And the territorial sea, whether it's three miles or, you know, however many miles it is now, which we'll get to later, we don't want to ruin the surprise. That's a big deal. How far offshore a territorial sea goes now. But basically, it's an extension of the sovereign soil of a nation, a coastal nation. So if a ship sails into that and they're acting a little belligerent, they want to shoot their cannons off or whatever, that's an act of war. It's tantamount to invading that nation's soil. Right. And that actually got us into a couple of wars, right? It did. We took the, not the big one. That's World War II. No. Yeah. World War I. World War I, War of 1812. World War I was the sinking of the Lusitania. Absolutely. And one of the reasons

that drew us in is because an attack on another country's vessels in international waters, which is everything outside of the territorial waters, which is most of the ocean, right? Sure. That is an act of war as well. So the British vessels capturing American sailors provoked the War of 1812. Right. And the Lusitania being sunk by the Germans, the Germans, that was what caused World War I in large part. Right. American involvement. After that, the United States, I love that we were the ones that said, you know what, three miles isn't going to cut it. We want 200 miles. And in 1945, we just kind of declared that so. Yeah. The great Sea Grab of 45, I like to call it. Basically what happened for 300 years, the law of the sea,

it was an unofficial agreement. Right. An unofficial treaty. So the fact that it lasted 300 years is pretty significant. Yeah, that's amazing. But by 1945, one of the reasons that lasted so long is because we didn't have the capabilities to draw things like, oh, I don't know, oil, natural gas, huge commercial fishing operations weren't up yet. Absolutely. But by the mid 20th century, we'd started to develop these capabilities. Right. And so under pressure from oil companies, Truman actually just said, you know what, I'm going to unilaterally extend the US's territorial waters 200 miles from three miles to 200 miles. Right. I got a stat for you. I want to hear it. Speaking of oil, 1954, we were only pulling out less than one million tons of

oil per year from the ocean. Right. From all the oceans combined, right? That's right. And by the end of the 1960s, which, you know, not even that much further along, almost 400 million tons per year. Right. So these things had increased in value or sophistication and removing them from the bottom of the sea had increased, right? And all of a sudden, instead of just some ships passing, you know, loaded with cigarettes from going from one country to another, right, this was the sea became a really much, much busier place because that time. Yes. Because there's a lot of money to be had. Agreed. I have another stat. I want to hear it. In 2004, which was just a short time ago, the United States alone generated $63 billion worth of wages paid out for oceanic activities. So

in just one year? Yeah. And just the United States? Absolutely. Wow. So that's okay. So it is this big business, right? Big time. And I imagine that's probably worth even more now with the, I can't imagine how much oil we're drawing out now. Yeah. Four years later, it's probably, yeah, a lot more. So, so clearly, everybody kind of wants as much of these resources as they can get. Right. Which was the 200 mile seagrab that the US kicked off. A whole lot of other countries followed suit immediately. I'm sure it was just a mess, right? Well, they're doing it. I want my 200 miles. Yeah. So, and a lot of these overlapped, you know, I mean, like think of Cuba. Cuba is not 200 miles from the US. So there's all, there's just a big mess. Lots of ramifications. And because

it was an informal treaty, the law of the sea, nobody could say anything really, right? True. Even worse, now that we're drawing all these resources out, the, and overfishing in commercial fisheries, nobody wants, everybody wants the resources, but nobody wants the responsibility of taking care of the oceans. Right. And overfishing is a huge problem right now. So. Right. Sure. And, and one of the reasons why is because of the, there weren't any, any, you know, I guess, treaties with teeth in place until 1967. Right. Thanks to your buddies in Malta. Yeah. The, the Maltese ambassador of the UN, when Arvid Pardo finally stood up and said, wait, wait, we must do something about this. This is out of hand. Everybody's going nuts. I'm looking

at you, United States. Right. And he suggested that they have a convention and what came out of that was the convention of the law of the sea. Right. It makes a lot of, you know, I can't believe it took a that long to officially do this. Yeah. He said it in 67. Right. And the convention was finally ratified in what 1982. Well, 82 and then didn't come into force until 94. So it took that long just to get this thing. Well, that's, that's the UN for you. Yeah. They're not a fast moving body, you know, lazy is what they are. Kind of. So at least they did this. Thank you to Mr. Pardo, by the way. Of Malta. Yes. And one of the, it had several provisions to it. Yes. One of the things it did was it codified the law of the sea. Right. The territorial sea. Well, the law

of the sea, the original treaty, the original agreement that number one, the oceans really belong to everybody. Right. It set up an international maritime tribunal for complaints and, you know, a doling out revenge, that kind of thing. Right. And it also is, well, also we finally get to that mystery fact. You ready? Yes. It extended territorial waters from three miles to 12 nautical miles, which is 13.8 regular land miles, which are my favorite kind of miles. Yeah. Land miles. It don't even ask me how many kilometers that is, because I'm an American. So we don't, we don't play that way. No, we don't. We're the only people in the world who don't, too. And I remember when, I remember when I was in elementary school, the metric system,

you know, we had to study it because we're going to go to the metric system very, very soon. Well, I think, yeah, I remember that. I was in the womb. Yeah. What a joke. So nice Chuck, by American. One of the other things that it did was establish exclusive economic zones. Right. You want to talk about these, Chuck? Yeah, EEZs. Basically, if territorial waters extend our state's laws to rights of defense, EEZs basically are our right to resources. Right. We're talking what we were just saying, fisheries, oil, that kind of thing. And how far do they go? They go 200 miles. So that's really substantial. Right. And so basically it said, okay, you can have, you can attack somebody

if they come within 12 nautical miles of your shore. Right. You can't attack anybody out there, but if there's somebody mining in your EEZ, right, you can come to the international tribunal and we'll dole out some revenge for you, right? Right. So a lot of people already had basically what amounted to an EEZ after the sea grab in 1945. Right. And basically they were using the continental slope as the boundary, right? Because that's where there's a continental shelf that goes from shore to the continental slope. And this is a relatively shallow. Yeah. Like 650 feet or something. Right. Which doesn't sound shallow to me, but I'm no deep sea. Once it hits the slope, you're talking about it going miles down. Right. That's frightening to me. Right. And

I also, I want to make a prediction here, Chuck. Okay. Once our technology to remove natural resources advances enough that we can get it out of the, you know, areas in the continental slope, there will be yet another sea grab. They'll push it out even further. Agreed. At some point, they may just push it out so far that they all connect. Well, you know, this is good. This is going on right now. Is it? There is another sea grab going on around the Arctic Circle. Sure. Thanks to our friend climate change, which I think we're used to call it global warming, but they didn't pan out, right? Right. Okay. So climate change is actually starting to melt the polar ice caps. Yeah. And there's an estimated 25% of what remains of the world's natural gas and oil reserves

locked under that ice. The ice is starting to unlock. Right. And so all of a sudden, Canada, the US, Russia, Norway, I think Sweden. Yeah, Denmark. Denmark, they're all trying to claim exclusive economic rights to those. Right. And there's basically a race going on and everyone's using geology now. They're kind of following the UN convention, but we'll see what happens. Yeah, no one cares about the polar bear. Yeah, no. I mean, that's not true. People do care, but they're disappearing because of the, you know, the ice caps. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah, they're not going to have too many places to go very soon, I imagine. No, and it affects their, I was just writing about this is why I brought it up. Okay. But it affects their migrating patterns

and their ability to hunt because they hunt from, you know, perched on the ice caps. They get the seals. Oh yeah. No ice, no hunting. It's really sad. Tragic. The other thing too, Josh, we wanted to mention or I wanted to mention was Straits. I love Straits. They're my favorite body of water. Right. And it's tricky area because Straits are usually more narrow than the 12 mile territorial sea rule. So if you have Straits that go between, you know, like a five mile strait going between two countries, what do you do? You claim it as international water. That's the only fair thing to do. Yeah. And that was actually part of the, the custom, no, sorry, the law of the sea. Oh, the original was right. Yeah. That was that the convention on the law of the sea from the UN

said, yeah, we're going to stick with that. So they push that through. Yeah, pretty cool. Agreed, Chuck. In 1968, five black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama. I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children. And they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can. I believe Mount Megs was patterned after slavery. I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what I'm writer and reporter, Josie Duffy Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for

black kids to a nightmare and how those five black girls changed everything. All that on unreformed. Listen to unreformed on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God took a walk into the devil's stand. The car fells. They just killed everybody that was home. They start pulling out pictures of Clay Williams body taken out in the Everglades, a world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester, he never ran anything but grass

until I turned over that load of coke to him on the island. Chester would claim he did it all for this CIA, pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation. So Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Listen to murder in Miami on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, you know, you might be thinking at this point, okay, this is all well and good for coastal nations. What about landlocked nations? What about Luxembourg? You know what Luxembourg has every right to the international waters as you and I do. Yes, but how does that help them with Oh, I don't know things like shipping. They're landlocked, right? Shouldn't they have some sort of access through

their coastal neighbors, territorial waters, unfettered, unmolested? I think so. And I bet you're about to tell me that they do. They do. That's good. They do. That's I believe that's part of the UN Convention on the law of the sea, that you have to gain you have to allow them access through your territorial waters to the coast. If you're a coastal nation, and you can't tax them, you can't levy tariffs, right? Basically, it's trying to make it fair, right? The problem is, is if you are a landlocked country, it sucks for you. There's all sorts of figures and statistics that basically show that especially developing countries, they're called, they're called LLDCs, landlocked developing countries. Oh, man, they can't get a leg up, right? Well, sure, because

there's so many resources in the ocean that they can't get access to. Well, it's not just that. You remember you said that the U.S. had $63 billion made from just aquatic maritime activities. Those were wages paid out, but yeah. Right. Okay. That's just wages, right? Not including economic stimulus of any kind. But it's not just that. People in landlocked developing countries have a life expectancy of about three and a half years less on average than their coastal neighbors who are of the same developmental progress. Really? Yeah. They have, they make about three times less salary on average and their volume of trade is about 60% less than their coastal neighbors. And one of the examples I read about was the Central African Republic, which is a landlocked

Western African nation. It costs $13,000 to send a shipping container to that country. You know, the standard ones that go from like train to ship to whatever. Right. Right. To send it to the Ivory Coast, which is their coastal neighbor right there, costs $3,000. So as a result, landlocked Western African nations are making about 12% of what their coastal neighbors are and importing, exporting revenues. Right. It's a shame, Josh, that these landlocked countries can't partner up with the coastal nations and, you know, work out some kind of a trade deal. Like maybe they have better land for growing a crop inland in the spirit of, you know, global economy. You should be president of the world, Chuck. I think that's a fine idea.

I have another question, Josh. Okay, let's hear it. I was looking at, you know, they've got some underwater hotels. Now have you heard of these? It rings a bell, but I think that may be from a Simpsons episode. No, it's actually real. They have one in Dubai that's, I believe it's opening very soon called Hydropolis. Cool. You know, Dubai does all those crazy things. I know, they've got really great imaginations. And there's another one off the coast of Fiji that's set to open next year called the Poseidon Undersea Resort. And these are big, big money. We're talking like 1500 bucks a night for a room. And think about the insurance. Sure. These are off the coast. So they're within the

territorial area, but my question, and I don't have an answer, but my question is, these are private companies opening these things up. So technically, they're on the land below the sea that belongs to that country. So I wonder if they had to work out a deal like whoever opened up Hydropolis had to work out a deal with the Dubai government. We want this little parcel of land under the water to build something to create a lot of revenue. And what kind of rent do we need to pay? Yeah, they probably have a lease. Like, I guess an oil company would have for offshore drilling. Okay. I guess that makes sense. You know, it's probably very long and expensive. Right. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Yeah. Okay. One

last thing. I don't, I think we would be remiss in getting out of this podcast if we didn't name the five oceans. Can you name a Chuck? It's not in the article. Well, Josh, technically, it's all one big ocean because it's all connected. Yes. Nice try, Chuck. You want to try naming the five oceans? I probably can't do this. It's embarrassing. I'm going to say Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic. How many are there? Five. And there's one more you got. You got one more to go. Arctic and oh, like it's southern. Yes. It is the southern ocean. That's what it's called. Yeah. Who knew? Yeah, I had no idea. I thought there were only four. Oh, wow. There's three continents though, right? Well, while we all just soak in Chuck's shame, we're going to... That's a deep

pool, my friend. I think we should go to Listener Mail, get you out of this one. I think so. It's great time for Listener Mail. So, Josh, this week, we have a couple of things. We have one I'm just going to call Correction Coup. This is a correction with a haiku, which is... Oh, nice. We love these. And then we have an exceptional Listener Mail. Lee Santel or Santelli, I'm not sure, wrote us in with the Correction Coup about just the one we released the other day, about Niagara Falls. And you likened a breather to scuba equipment. You probably knew you were wrong as soon as it came out of your mouth. No, I thought that's the piece that goes in your mouth. No, Josh. Apparently, a scuba buoyancy control device, or BCD, exhales the same carbon dioxide that the user exhales,

which bubbles to the surface. A breather recycles a portion that the user exhales, and the reusable oxygen is rebreathed. So, basically, with a rebreather, you have no bubbles, which is why the Navy SEALs use it. Exactly. And I think that's what I was referencing, was Navy SEAL scuba equipment, not, you know, Joe Schmobe scuba equipment. Oh, of course. In that case, you were right. And Lee, thanks for nothing. No, just kidding. Here's a haiku, though, that Lee put at Races Sinkley. Swimming under blue, passing fishes on the left. Don't forget the air. Very important. Nice. And we have one more, which I like to call exceptional fan mail from our friend, Chrissy, is what she calls herself. Christina Cannon in

Michigan, and she's a student and her family, they sit around and listen to our podcast, which is so cool. I know. Hello, Chrissy's family. And she wrote a little poem and owed to How Stuff Works. It goes a little something like this. I used to listen to Coldplay on my daily walks to class, but those days are finished since the How Stuff Works podcast shows a random and funny and make me laugh out loud a lot, for it's not every day I learned what is the best place to be shot. On behalf of us college students, thanks for telling us stuff we should know. I hope you guys have a great weekend and keep up the wonderful show. So, nice. In your face Coldplay. I know. So, thank you to Chrissy and the other one, Lee. All right. Thanks to both of you and to everybody

who writes in to let us know that we warm the cockles of your heart because you warm ours. And if you want to know more about who owns the ocean, you can type in who owns the ocean appropriately enough in the handy search bar of our beloved website. Also, I would recommend going to OpenDemocracy.com and looking for an article called Aiming for the Sea that argues points about landlocked developing countries. And I took a couple stats from them, not a shame to admit. Right. And we would also like to plug our blog, which is... Do a check. Should be now live on the website. It's the stuff you should know blog and we want to invite our fans to interact with each other and talk about things that we talk about.

And, you know, it's a smart group of people out there, you guys. Yeah. You can actually access that through the HowStuffWorks homepage. There's a little portal through there. Take you through time and space to me and Chuck. That's right. And if you want to send us an email, wow, this is a lot of information. If you want to send us an email, you can send it to stuffpodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American Ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you.

What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.