Maritime law regionalization in the western part of the Pacific Ocean is characterized by difficulties of varying degrees. Both Australia and New Zealand as well as the South Pacific island states and territories have proved that the demarcation of maritime law borders can be facilitated if the general political situation is positive and if the distances between neighbouring states are large. The sea-bed in these areas can be unequivocally assigned to the respective coastal states. In addition, based on present knowledge, the sea-bed contains no exceptional deposits. A number of relatively valuable fish live in the column of water of the fishery and economic zones, but the coastal states are at present not, or only partly, able to utilize these resources completely. This means that the distant fishing nations do not have to give up fishing in these large areas but are able to continue working there as a result of numerous contracts, although they do have to pay licence fees. Potential disputes between distant fishing nations and states in the Australia-New Zealand-South Pacific region are made less likely by the fact that the world market demand for fish is growing, and the resulting competition forces the long-distance fishery nations to compromise.

More complicated problems concerning the association and utilization of sea zones have been experienced in East and Southeast Asia. Here, one finds sea areas which are surrounded by a number of coastal states, whose political conflicts with foreign countries are naturally transferred to maritime law regionalization. These sea areas are also not large enough to permit each country to expand its sea zone as far as it would wish (cf. Alexander 1974).

These partly enclosed seas present a rather difficult starting point, and this is even more the case if they contain a large number of islands: according to the new Convention on the Law of the Sea, islands have a great effect on the size of maritime law zones. These islands, even if they are small, uninhabited, lacking in natural resources and mainly forgotten, thus gain unusual importance, and the question of possession can even result in military confrontations.