It is no surprise that the subject "The Future of the Law of the Sea" meets with special interest in the Netherlands. "The sea is our element, the roaring sea our glory," as the old folksong says. For a nation whose and prosperity are so closely connected with the sea, it is of the fate utmost importance to which regime the nations that border upon, sail and exploit the sea are subjected. Until recently nobody worried about the legal regime of the sea. The principle of the freedom of the sea, since Hugo Grotius one of the strongest, hardly assailable, principles of inter national law, was it...