Cite as: 521 U. S. 1 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
§ 1331, we are concerned in this case only with the 3-mile belt of the territorial sea that determines a State's Submerged Lands Act grant. Under Article 6 of the Convention, the outer limit of that territorial sea belt is a line every point of which is three miles from the nearest point of the baseline. This means of measuring the outer limit of the belt is also known as the "arcs-of-circles" method.
Alaska objected to application of the Article 3 "normal baseline" approach to its Arctic Coast. In the Leased Area of the Beaufort Sea, some offshore islands are more than six miles apart or more than six miles from the mainland. If Alaska owns only those offshore submerged lands beneath each 3-mile belt of territorial sea, the United States will own "enclaves" of submerged lands, wholly or partly surrounded by state-owned submerged lands, beneath waters more than three miles from the mainland but not within three miles of an island. Two such federal enclaves exist in the Leased Area between the mainland and the Flaxman Island chain, beneath the waters of Stefansson Sound. To eliminate these enclaves, Alaska offered alternative theories for determining the seaward limit of its submerged lands in the vicinity of barrier islands. Alaska principally contended that the United States should be required to draw "straight baselines" connecting the barrier islands and to measure the territorial sea from those baselines. Article 4 of the Convention permits a nation to use straight baselines to measure its territorial sea "[i]n localities where the coast line is deeply indented and cut into, or if there is a fringe of islands along the coast in its immediate vicinity." The parties agree that Alaska's coastline satisfies this description. Under this approach, waters landward of the baseline would be treated as "inland" waters, and Alaska would own all submerged lands beneath those waters.
The Master rejected this approach, finding that the use of straight baselines under Article 4 is permissive, not mandatory, and that the decision whether to use straight baselines
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