The importance accorded to the extension of Britain’s fishery limits has tended to obscure the existence of subordinate jurisdictions inside the 200-mile zone, which are imperfectly integrated in the present administrative system.

An illustration occurs in a recent order made under the Sea Fisheries Regulation Act 1966, incorporating into the Eastern Sea Fisheries District an area formerly managed by the Anglian Water Authority.1 As a result of a complex process of legislative evolution, the composite entity is seemingly greater than the sum of its pre-existing parts. To understand this paradox, it is necessary to examine a sequence of developments spanning 90 years.

The establishment of sea fisheries districts for England and Wales was originally faciliatated by the Sea Fisheries Regulation Act 1888;2 similar powers were subsequently provided in Scotland,3 but these have never been exercised. By 1912, orders of the Board of Trade or the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries had divided coastal waters among 11 local fisheries committees,4 whose primary functions were to enforce national enactments and issue by-laws for the protection and improvement of commercial fishing. Corresponding status was also conferred on the Board of Conservators of the Suffolk and Essex Fishery District, from whom the Anglian Water Authority inherited the responsibilities that it has now surrendered.5

The boundaries between adjoining areas, and their landward extremities, were specified with reasonable precision, since it was patently essential to distinguish the scope of neighbouring authorities. The seaward extent, however, was less explicit, and the orders referred simply to “the sea within which Her Majesty’s subjects have by international law the exclusive right of fishing”.6 At that time, British fishery limits were based on art. II of the International Convention for the purpose of regulating the Police of the Fisheries in the North Sea outside Territorial Waters, which had been confirmed by the Sea Fisheries Act 1883.7 Thus, the zone stretched for three miles from low-water mark along the coast, including dependent islands and banks; but this distance was computed from straight lines drawn across the mouths of bays up to 10 miles wide.

As the initial intention was that local control should coincide with the enjoyment of public privileges, it is interesting to observe the impact of the London Fisheries Convention 1964,8 which decided that “the coastal State has the exclusive right to fish and exclusive jurisdiction in matters of fisheries within the belt of six miles measured