OFFSHORE CLAIMS AND DISPUTES: ATLANTIC, PACIFIC, AND ARCTIC • 313
from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. The international
boundary, which is generally drawn equidistant from each country’s
shoreline down the center of the strait, is not contested by the govern-
ments of Canada or the United States, but rather by the government
of the Province of British Columbia. It has been arguing since the
1970s that the center of the submarine Juan de Fuca Canyon, closer
to the American shore, is the correct location.
Another Pacific dispute concerns the Dixon Entrance and Portland
Canal. The Alaska boundary dispute, which was ended through
international arbitration in 1903, identified 54 degrees, 40 minutes,
north latitude as the coastal boundary between British Columbia and
the Alaska panhandle. In Dixon Entrance, this line follows the north
side of the channel, along the American shoreline, but has never been
accepted by the United States as demarking the maritime boundary.
The same applies to Portland Canal, where the treaty specified that
the boundary was to follow the shoreline on the American side of the
inlet, a specification that the United States does not accept. On U.S.
maps and charts of the area, the international boundary is shown fol-
lowing the center of each body of water, while Canadian maps and
charts show the boundary in the locations specified by the treaty.
The Arctic dispute between Canada, the United States, and the
EU over the Northwest Passage is more about the nature of the pas-
sage under international law than it is about who controls the waters.
Canada considers its entire Arctic archipelago to be internal waters,
meaning not only that ships transiting through it are subject to Ca-
nadian laws, but also that vessels wishing to pass through it must
first acquire the permission of Canada. The position of the United
States and the EU, on the other hand, is that the Northwest Passage
is an international strait, and that as such the vessels of all nations
can exercise the right of innocent passage through it, without asking
permission. In practice, this right has seldom been tested, as few ves-
sels are currently able to transit the passage without the assistance of
an icebreaker. In 1985, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea
made the transit without Canadian permission, and it has long been
suspected that American and British nuclear submarines regularly
transit through Canadian waters without permission en route to the
Arctic Ocean and the North Pole. Successive Canadian governments
have spoken of making Arctic sovereignty a top priority, and in 2007
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