28
Opinion of the Court
tical charts produced following a 1949-1950 survey of the Beaufort Sea by a United States Coast and Geodetic Survey party depict Dinkum Sands as an island, consistent with a survey note describing a "new gravel bar baring about three feet" at mean high water. Alaska Exh. 84A-203 (U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Descriptive Report to Accompany Hydrographic Survey H-7761, p. 3); see Alaska Exh. 84A-202 (U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Addendum to Descriptive Report to Accompany Hydrographic Survey H-7760, p. 4). Second, in 1971, an ad hoc interagency group known as the Baseline Committee, charged with delimiting the United States' coastline, produced baseline charts treating Dinkum Sands as an island. Third, a 1979 map developed for a joint federal-state oil and gas lease sale in the Prudhoe Bay area assigned ownership of a 3-mile belt of territorial sea around Dinkum Sands to Alaska.
As Alaska appears to acknowledge, see Alaska Exceptions Brief 53, the 1971 baseline chart and the 1979 leasing map were based on the 1949-1950 survey rather than independent observations. In 1956, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey resumed charting Dinkum Sands as a low-tide elevation, based on observations of a Navy vessel made the prior year. It is undisputed that one of the members of the Baseline Committee persuaded the Committee to treat Dinkum Sands as an island based solely on his personal observation of Dinkum Sands as a member of the 1949-1950 survey party. See Alaska Exh. 84A-207 (Department of State, Memorandum to Members of the Baseline Committee, Minutes of Oct. 10, 1979, Meeting, p. 2) (noting that the Committee "has used Dinkum Sands as a basepoint for determining the breadth of the territorial sea . . . because early surveys showed Dinkum Sands to be above high water and Admiral Nygren had personally observed it above high water"). The 1979 leasing map relied on the 1971 baseline chart in assigning Dinkum Sands its own 3-mile belt of territorial sea.
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