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General info
 The concept of maritime boundaries is a relative new concept. Coastal states now want to delimit an area in the ocean where they have exclusive rights over the mineral and biological resources.
The basis for the calculation of maritime boundaries is the declaration of a baseline. The conditions under which a state may establish such baseline are described in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A baseline of a country can be the low water line, a straight baseline (a line that encloses bays, estuaries, inland waters,...) or a combination of the two.
The zone extending 12 Nautical Miles from the baseline is the Territorial Sea and the zone extending 24 Nautical Miles is the Contiguous Zone of a country.
The legal Exclusive Economic Zone is the zone extending 200 Nautical Miles from the baseline. When the space between two countries is less than 400 Nautical Miles, the boundary should be the Median Line or should be described in a multilateral treaty.
Multilateral treaties and documents describing the baselines of countries can be found on the website of the United Nations. Those documents were a major source for the development of the database.
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