The Dumbest War Nobody Talks About

Feel free to join my Patreon, your support is very much appreciated! Big thanks to Dana for the help with some of my French questions! Join the Subreddit! Subscribe to my Second Channel! Twitter ➤ Twitch ➤ Discord ➤ TikTok ➤ @ Instagram ➤ @BlueJayYouTube Leave a like, comment, and share if you enjoyed! Bird art by Cass: Thank you, Kata and Duek, for the suggestion! The Lobster War is a classic tale of how a dispute can escalate beyond reason, particularly when the pride of nationalism is put to the test. Originating from a dispute over Spiny Lobster fishing rights, this disagreement highlighted the lack of adequate international agreements on the territorial waters and fishing rights of a nation as the events took place two decades before the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In the 1960’s, French fishing vessels traveled to the Brazilian coast to harvest lobster, igniting an international debate on the legality of this which hinged on the answer to a single question: can a lobster be considered a fish? Brazil argued that because lobster crawl along the ocean floor, they are considered an economic resource apart of their continental shelf. The French, for their part, argued that lobsters “swim“ as they hop along the ocean floor, making them essentially a fish that can be caught by any country’s vessel. The eventual peaceful resolution of this conflict led to the extension of Brazil’s territorial waters to a 200-nautical-mile zone, setting the basis for exclusive economic zones of the same length that would come in the following decades.