The United States experienced an abrupt expansion of its landmass of one million square kilometers (more than 386,000 square miles), more than twice the size of Spain. This land expansion was not caused by unusual geological forces or the invasion of a foreign land, but rather by the nation’s attempts to assert its claim over the surrounding ocean floor territory. Continental shelves are the areas of the seabed surrounding large landmasses where the sea is relatively shallow when compared to the open ocean.
The countries are free to claim these continental shelves in accordance with international law, which gives them the ability to control and use their resources.
The area of the continental shelf that is located beyond than 200 nautical miles (230 miles) from the coast is known as the Extended Continental Shelf (ECS), and around 75 countries have established their ECS boundaries. The US has not established its ECS until last year.
On December 19, 2023, the US State Department released new geographic coordinates that they claimed to be its ECS area.
Since 2003, the US government has worked with the US Geological Survey, NOAA, and twelve other agencies to collect geological data for determining the boundaries of their ECS.
As of right now, the US has established ECS claims in seven offshore regions, including the Arctic, the Bering Sea, the Atlantic (east coast), the Pacific (west coast), the Mariana Islands, and two regions in the Gulf of Mexico.
The total area claimed is one million square kilometers, or around 386,000 square miles.
“America is larger than it was yesterday,” said Mead Treadwell, who is a former Alaska lieutenant governor and former chair of the US Arctic Research Commission, while speaking to Alaska Public Media. “It’s not quite the Louisiana Purchase. It’s not quite the purchase of Alaska, but the new area of land and subsurface resources under the land controlled by the United States is two Californias larger,” Treadwell added. How US define its ECS? Explaining the process of making the definition official, Treadwell said that the US needs to submit reports and data to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
It is unclear how the proposition will be accepted as per international law, though, as the UNCLOS has not been ratified by the US due to complex political disagreements (the agreement has been ratified by 168 states and the European Union). Treadwell told the media, “I think the United States would listen if somebody came back and said, ‘Your science is bad,’ but I don’t think science is bad: I think we’ve had very good science.”
