The UN Law of Sea defines an island as “a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.” However, according to the same international law, not every kind of island engenders the same legal effects: “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.” In the Pacific Ocean, some 1750 kilometers south of Tokyo, the governor of Tokyo raised the Japanese flag, and placed an address plaque “1 Okinotori Island, Ogasawara Village, Tokyo” on a rock, or actually two rocks. The first one is roughly the size of a small room, the second one that of a twin bed. The smallest pokes some 7 centimeters out of the ocean, the bigger one arrives at double this altitude. In order to continue claiming territorial rights and assert exclusive economic control and fishing rights in a two hundred nautical mile zone around the rocks — i.e. in a part of the ocean larger than the surface of Japan’s mainland — these rocks need to be protected against the effects of global warming and typhoons. What is more: they need to naturally grow, in order to change status from mere rock into “a naturally formed area of land”. According to the New York Times the Japanese government has already spent over 600 million dollars to keep the barren islets above water. It encased the tiny protrusions in 25 meter thick concrete, at a cost of 280 million dollars, then made slits across the concrete, so it would comply with the UN law that an island be surrounded by water. Since then, Japanese scientists are developing genetically modified species of coral with the aim to grow the rocks into a small but internationally recognized archipelago: the Okinotori Islands
