US quietly grew nearly 400,000 square miles

The US grew 386,000 square miles bigger last month.

The United States got 386,000 square miles bigger last month below the surface of the sea.

America’s geographic coordinates that define its continental shelf’s outer limits have shifted in parts beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast, according to the US Department of State.

The extended continental shelf (ECS) is the area of the continental shelf that is under shallow water. The US’s largest ECS area is in the Arctic, where it reaches 350 nautical miles to the north in the eastern section and more than 680 nautical miles in the western portion, the State Department announced on December 19.

‘Like other countries, the United States has rights under international law to conserve and manage the resources and vital habitats on and under its ECS,’ said the State Department. The ECS has ‘many resources’ like corals and crabs and ‘vital habitats for marine life’.

The US’s ECS includes six other regions: the Atlantic east coast, the Pacific west coast, the Bering Sea, the Mariana Islands and two portions of the Gulf of Mexico. Its total ECS area is roughly double the size of California.

Washington, DC-based think tank the Wilson Center said the ECS extension affects the US’s efforts to secure its territorial rights in the Arctic region.

‘It has long been clear that the United States has major economic interests in undersea territory rich in oil, natural gas, minerals and sea life to which it has sovereign rights under the law of the sea as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention,’ stated the Wilson Center.

The US has the largest exclusive economic zone in the globe, which helps it safeguard its sovereign rights to areas submerged under water, according to the think tank.

‘It is also an important milestone reflecting US engagement with the law of the sea as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and as an aspect of advancing major US interests in the Arctic and other regions,’ stated the Wilson Center.

There is ‘no need for a future negotiation with Russia’ over territorial rights, the Wilson Center said. That is because each country delineated its continental shelf limits in relation to a boundary set by a 1990 agreement between the US and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Maritime Boundary.

The State Department measured the US’s ECS growth by analyzing depth, shape and other submerged geophysical features. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and US Geological Survey have been collecting and analyzing data since 2003.

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