ABSTRACT
The exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was a new development in the international law of the sea introduced by United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, and aspects of EEZ regime are evolving. The United States includes the EEZ within the scope of ‘international waters’. The United States insists on the freedom to conduct military activities in a foreign EEZ out of concern that its naval and air access and mobility could be severely restricted by any global trend towards ‘thickening jurisdiction’ over the EEZ. Marine scientific research is the general term used to describe those activities undertaken to expand scientific knowledge of the marine environment. The United States equates the right to conduct what it calls ‘military surveys’ in an EEZ without prior notification to, or the permission of the coastal state with a similar right to conduct hydrographic surveys in an EEZ.
