Faldage - I take your point on my inelegant mixing of words - "our" and "international" do serve to cancel each other out.

I will however clutch at the line thrown by Bean as well. The little I know about international vs territorial water treaties tells me that the whole thing is a hodge podge. As mentioned in the past, Australia lays claim to Heard Island in the Antarctic and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. We've also put our name on a fair chunk of the Antarctic (you know Jazzo - the big white island to the south of the Southern Ocean) Ownership of these places lets us lay claim to vast additional areas of ocean - perhaps like Hawaii does for the US. I seem to recall that some countries refuse to acknowledge these waters as ours and hence are prepared to fish them.

I could be way off line here so apologies in advance - just in case.

Perhaps if I'd used "territorial waters" in the preceding post instead of "international waters"?

stales