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The borders of countries on the map are, well, complicated.

I've already made three videos about the world's strangest borders, but these borders are all clearly visible on maps because, well, there on land.

Today, though, we're talking about the system of international borders on the water, and they're actually even more wild than the ones on land are you see on the land.

There's usually ways to clearly Marco borders belonging to your country, city or civilization.

Rivers, mountains, lakes and peninsulas all make clean and orderly borders.

But the ocean, on the other hand, is just an empty, flat wasteland with nothing to really distinguish one area from another at the surface.

And therefore, different people have different ideas about what part of the ocean belongs to them.

The most agreed upon system for Territorial rights of the ocean, was established back in 1982 by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

This gave every country in the world for the coastline, a zone of ocean territory called an exclusive economic zone, or e easy for short.

Every country's E easy stretches out to 200 nautical miles away from their coastline, and each country has certain exclusive and economic rights within their zones.

Toe harvest resource is like fish, oil or gas.

This is a map of every country's e easy in the world, and there's a lot of pretty weird things to digest here.

First of all, the parts of the ocean outside of any easy are considered international waters.

They don't belong to any country's legal jurisdiction, and laws are generally enforced by local street justice.

Ships sailing in international waters are bound by the laws of the country's flag that they fly.

If any and ships involved in piracy out here could get dished out justice by literally anybody who happens to pass them by, however, the easies themselves have some pretty quirky borders.

The United Kingdom, for example, continues to maintain an extensive maritime empire that's invisible on most maps.

Britannia still rules a decent chunk of waves in the Atlantic without posts in the Pacific and Indian oceans, owing to her few remaining island colonies.

But since the law for E Eazy E's stretches out to 200 nautical miles away from the coast.

The UK maritime empire is still alive and well, but not so alive and well as the empire that France continues to possess.

In a juicy historical irony, France possesses the most extensive maritime empire in the world today and controls the world's largest e easy, with huge blobs in the Pacific, pretty big blobs in the Indian Ocean and outposts in the Atlantic.

Francis extensive overseas islands and territories ensure this and the French E.

E Z is so large and overall territory that it's even larger than the entire country of Canada when it's all combined.

In fact, 8% of all the easy territory in the world is under French administration, despite only 0.45% of Earth's land territory being under French control.

That pesky 200 nautical mile limit from a coastline, though, has set up some pretty weird situations elsewhere, though, particularly in Russia.

Here in the Sea of Okhotsk, the entire C is surrounded by Russian territory on all sides, so most of it does fall within the 200 nautical mile range of the Russian E easy except for this little hole in the middle here that's just out of that range from any direction.

This little hole is called the peanut hole, and technically it would fall under the classifications of international waters, which has plagued Russia with problems.

This legal technicality was apparently discovered by other countries in the 19 nineties who realized that they could just show up there and legally plunder everything without any consequences.

A fleet of 39 Polish super trollers sailed around the world just to raid the area for fish and not wanting to miss out on an opportunity for free loot.

The entire Chinese commercial fishing fleet soon came barging in as well.

The peanut hole was eventually full of hundreds of fishing ships that weren't at all Russian.

It was full of Polish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and even Panamanian fishing fleets, and all of the business was severely depleting fish in the entire sea.

Fish obviously swim wherever they want in and out of different parts of the ocean, and the non Russian fleets didn't really care about how many fish they caught because it was only depleting the Russian see and not their own nearby water.

Understandably, Russia was pretty pissed off about the entire situation and petition the U.

N for a loophole in the easy law.

You see, a country can extend their easy beyond that 200 nautical mile limit if they can legally proved that the area was an extension of their continental shelf or the part of a continent that's underwater.

Russia managed to successfully get the U.

N to recognize the peanut whole as being a part of their continental shelf.

And in March 2014, the Russian E.

E Z was legally extended to cover it, and the age of foreign fishing rating parties came to an end.

But that's not the only part of the system that people have ever disagreed on.

China has a well, rather optimistic view of their own easy.

This is the technical legal e easy that China was ascribed under U.

N.

Law, but this is the easy.

The China asserts that it actually has for clarification.

Both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan claim the exact same optimistic e easy orders.

So because of this, both China and Taiwan run into a direct border conflict with Japan over the Senkaku islands.

There claimed e Eazy e's all intersect over the islands which are uninhabited and they all three claim ownership over them anyway.

Japan claims that they discovered the islands like they are now uninhabited in the 19th century and claimed them under international law, whereas both China and Taiwan assert the islands as an imperial age Japanese conquest that has never been properly returned to them.

But this conflict is pretty straightforward and simple when compared to the train wreck of the South China Sea.

Six countries all have wildly competing claims here that are literally at odds with everybody else.

This is the claimed E Easy of Brunei, which seems fairly reasonable and here is the claimed the Easy of Malaysia, which also seems pretty moderate.

But it does conflict with Brunei.

But here is the claimed E Easy of the Philippines, which conflicts with both Brunei and Malaysia.

And here is the claim the easy of Vietnam, which conflicts with Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

But the most ambitious by far are the claimed E Eazy e's in the area of both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan which are identical and massively conflict with everybody.

At the center of these territorial border claims are the Spratly Islands, which all six countries lay claim to at least a part of China.

Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have all set up military bases and personnel on the islands to enforce their claims, and threats of war have been made in the past.

China has even resulted to constructing artificial islands, complete with air bases in the area, to further project their own claims.

But why does everybody here care so much about a bunch of tiny rocky islands?

First, the economic answer.

The sea is not only an extremely rich fishing area, but it's also likely home to extensive, undiscovered crude oil and natural gas reserves that can only be legally exploited by a country if they're e easy stretches out to cover it.

Therefore, everybody that borders it wants a piece of the Spratlys so that they're easy can cover more potential resource is there, and the second answer is geopolitical.

The South China Sea is one of the most important shipping routes in the entire world.

One thing, third of all global maritime trade passes through the sea.

Every single year, 39.5% of all of China's imports passes through the CIA's well, which includes an overwhelming 80% of all of China's energy imports.

If China lost sovereignty and control over the area, the flow of trade into her ports could become severely compromised.

Trade ships sailing from South Asia, Africa and Europe would have to take a much longer and much more expensive route to get into China, and China's economy would inevitably suffer.

Therefore, it is an imperative Chinese foreign policy goal to secure the area and make sure that the spice continues to flow.

Since Taiwan also claims to be the sole government of China, they make the exact same foreign policy claims is, the mainland does so.

They're easy claims directly overlap with one another, so borders are complicated.

And while they're supposed to be defensive in nature, maritime borders are difficult to enforce.

And we're still if you have a hole in your borders like Russia did than everybody who knows about it can just show up and steal all of your stuff.

It was basically a hole in their security system, and unfortunately for them they couldn't just solve it by slapping a password over to block out intruders.

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