exclusive economic zone

The exclusive economic zone reaches up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, or to a median line where a neighbor lies closer.

Within it the country alone may take fish, oil, gas and seabed minerals and alone may build wind farms. It is not sovereignty: ships and aircraft of any state pass through freely and may lay cables and pipelines.

This is by far the largest of the maritime zones, and for island states it dwarfs the land. It is the reason a country of a few hundred square kilometers can control an ocean area larger than a continental state.

Set by the Convention on the Law of the Sea, article 57.