Sharing the sea

Sir, Whaling (leading article, June 17) is only one of the unsettled problems of the world’s oceans. The basic problem is the idea of “the high seas”.

Throughout history, common land and open seas have been open to those who can most quickly exploit them and it is the enclosures of farming land that has made sustainable agriculture possible. We should do the same for the oceans.

It would not be difficult to divide all of the oceans beyond their contintental shelves, into the equivalent of fields, and to use modern methods, GPS, for one, to define their boundaries. Then all the nations that have a coastline would draw lots so that every patch of the oceans would have a definite owner. It would be