26
Opinion of the Court
international law does not purport to solve such minor problems" as how to treat formations that would be submerged at unusually high states of high tide. Alaska Exh. 84A-21 (Memorandum from Benjamin H. Read, Islands, Drying Rocks and Drying Shoals, Sept. 1957, p. 11). The United States presented that position at the 1958 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, arguing that "there is no established state practice regarding the effect of subnormal or abnormal or seasonal tidal action on the status of islands." 3 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, Official Records: First Committee (Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone), Summary Records of Meetings and Annexes, U. N. Doc. A/CONF.13/C1. /L.112, p. 242 (1958). The Conference adopted the United States' recommendation, and excised the words "permanently" and "in normal circumstances" from the definition of an island.
As the Master recognized, in including the phrase "in normal circumstances," the Convention's drafters had sought to accommodate abnormal events that would cause temporary inundation of a feature otherwise qualifying as an island. Report 300. The United States' view that the international definition of an island need not address abnormal or seasonal tidal activity ultimately prevailed. But the change from the Commission's draft to the final language of the Convention did not signal an intent to cover features that are only sometimes or occasionally above high tide. In fact, the problem of abnormal or seasonal tidal activity that the 1954 amendment addressed is fully solved by the United States' practice of construing "high tide" to mean "mean high water." Averaging high waters over a 19-year period accounts for periodic variations attributable to astronomic forces; nonperiodic, meteorological variations can be assumed to balance out over this length of time. See 2 A. Shalowitz, Shore and Sea Boundaries 58-59 (1964). Accordingly, even if a feature would be submerged at the highest monthly tides during a particular season or in unusual weather, the feature might
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