The mushrooming academic and diplomatic interest in the problems of maritime boundaries has created a world-wide need for an extensive bibliography. This book has been produced by Dalhousie’s Ocean Studies Programme to meet this need. It is aimed at researchers, and seeks to provide them with a guide to the copious writings on the delimitation of baselines, the seaward limits of the various coastal zones, and, especially, the delimitation of boundaries between overlapping claims.

Each entry comes with a brief annotation of anything between two and 20 lines, the purpose of which is said to be “to give the researcher a concise description of the contents of each work”. They are written in a relaxed style, which makes them easier to read than a “key”-type description. However, I often found them irritating. Claiming to be concise, they often include totally irrelevant material—“this book of seven chapters”, for instance. (At one point, we are even reminded that 1969 is not before 1958!) The annotations sometimes exceed their descriptive role by evaluating the quality of the work in question. More significantly, several annotations do not sufficiently indicate the contents of the work, preferring to adumbrate its conclusions or just list its chapter headings. A more prosaic approach should have been adopted throughout, listing the topics dealt with by each entry and noting especial areas of concentration. As they stand, many annotations are too sketchy to be useful.

Nevertheless, this bibliography merits much praise. Each entry receives a number, which cross-refers to an index of authors at the back of the book. Due to the width of the subject of maritime delimitation, the entries are grouped under several chapter headings, and each chapter is further subdivided into sections and sub-sections. Thus the chapter dealing with works analysing trends in maritime boundary delimitation contains a section on the seaward extent of the continental shelf, which is further sub-divided into State practice, the International Law Commission, UNCLOS I and II, and UNCLOS III. The appropriate entry is reproduced in full each time where the work has relevance under more than one heading. Of especial note is the fact that the compilers have grouped together the writings relating to each of the major international adjudications since 1945, and also those works which discuss particular areas of the world where there have been, or still are, major conflicts relating to ocean boundaries. An appendix lists, region by region, the bilateral agreements which have so far been made delimiting boundaries between overlapping claims, together with details of where they can be found. This is accompanied by an index of the agreements made by each State.