An increasing number of human activities occur in ocean space with known impacts resulting in biodiversity loss, decrease on species abundance, pollution, and other possible unforeseen consequences that need to be tackled with coordinated and sustained actions, to collectively improve ocean health.
The oceans potential in mineral, energy and biogenetic resources, both in areas under national jurisdiction and offshore waters, are becoming vital to future generations. An example of this process is the demonstrated interest of some States to continue increasing their jurisdictional waters with the expansion of their continental shelf (Suárez de Vivero et al. 2010).
From the perspective of the Law of the Sea, the waters and marine seabed between Europe and North America fall increasingly within national jurisdictions as a result of submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and associated sovereign rights declarations: The European Union (EU) Atlantic countries plus Norway have reached spatial gains of more than 5 million km2 (including overseas). Portugal alone has extended his Atlantic jurisdiction in 2 million km2. This expansion is resulti