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What is "territorial waters"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
territorial waters
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After a further two hour chase the Sea Rover was within our territorial waters where she was stopped and arrested by Seeker.
▪ From 1995, the dumping of all forms of industrial waste will be prohibited outside of territorial waters.
▪ Governors say they are afraid of a rebuff if they venture too near territorial waters.
▪ Heaven forbid that she should wander into any of his territorial waters.
▪ New Zealand legislation prohibiting nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships from its territorial waters had been first enforced in February 1985.
▪ The research ship Solo was seized when it crossed into territorial waters.
▪ The United States wanted the treaty to apply only outside the 12-mile limit of territorial waters, but it was overruled.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Territorial waters

Territorial waters \Ter`ri*to"ri*al wa"ters\ (Internat. Law) The waters under the territorial jurisdiction of a state; specif., the belt (often called the

marine belt or

territorial sea) of sea subject to such jurisdiction, and subject only to the right of innocent passage by the vessels of other states.

Perhaps it may be said without impropriety that a state has theoretically the right to extend its territorial waters from time to time at its will with the increased range of guns. Whether it would in practice be judicious to do so . . . is a widely different matter . . . . In any case the custom of regulating a line three miles from land as defining the boundary of marginal territorial waters is so far fixed that a state must be supposed to accept it in absence of express notice.
--W. E. Hall.

Wiktionary
territorial waters

n. (context politics geography English) A country's inland lakes and waterways as well as the portion of its coastal oceans, seas, or other adjoining body of water considered to fall within the political boundaries and legal jurisdiction of that country.

WordNet
territorial waters

n. the waters surrounding a nation and its territories over which that nation exercises sovereign jurisdiction [ant: high sea, high sea]

Wikipedia
Territorial waters

Territorial waters or a territorial sea as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is a belt of coastal waters extending at most from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (both military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it, or transit passage for straits; this sovereignty also extends to the airspace over and seabed below. Adjustment of these boundaries is called, in international law, maritime delimitation.

The term "territorial waters" is also sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and potentially the continental shelf.