Definition
Fishing banks are areas of comparatively shallow water in the sea that serve as productive grounds for commercial or subsistence fishing. The shallower depth allows sunlight penetration and supports the aquatic ecosystems—particularly fish populations—that make these zones economically and strategically valuable. The term appears primarily in property law, admiralty law, international law, and treaty contexts, where the legal status of fishing banks—whether they lie within territorial waters, an exclusive economic zone, or the high seas—determines who may fish them and under what conditions.
Why It Matters in Research
The term sits at the intersection of several distinct legal domains, and researchers should be alert to which domain a given source is operating in.
In property and boundary disputes, fishing banks were historically relevant to disputes between states or nations over coastal jurisdiction. Early American and British cases and treaties frequently referenced specific named banks—the Grand Banks off Newfoundland being the most prominent—when defining fishing rights. A researcher encountering "fishing banks" in 19th-century treaty materials or admiralty opinions should expect the term to carry jurisdictional freight: the location of a bank relative to a baseline, headland, or treaty-defined line could determine whether a vessel was lawfully fishing or subject to seizure.
In domestic American law, fishing banks appeared in early riparian and coastal property cases, and occasionally in statutes governing fisheries or licensing. The Oregon case cited in Bouvier's (21 Ore. 523) suggests state-level litigation over fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest during the late 19th century—a period of active conflict between commercial fishing interests, Native fishing rights, and state regulatory authority.
Modern researchers should note that contemporary fisheries law has largely displaced the common-law vocabulary of "fishing banks" in favor of the framework established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (federal, U.S.) and international instruments such as UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). The older term persists in historical documents, treaty interpretation cases, and indigenous fishing rights litigation where historical usage matters.
Do not confuse sources that use "banks" in a fisheries sense with sources that use "banks" in a financial sense. In a legal research database, keyword searches on "fishing banks" may surface irrelevant banking and finance materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines fishing banks simply as "[a] fishing ground of comparative shoal water in the sea," citing 21 Ore. 523. The definition is minimal and functional—Bouvier treats the term as largely self-evident and geographically descriptive rather than as a term of art requiring extended legal analysis.
What Bouvier does not address is the substantial legal complexity surrounding fishing banks in international and treaty law. By the time of the relevant Bouvier editions, the Grand Banks fisheries dispute between the United States and Great Britain had already generated significant diplomatic and arbitral history (culminating in the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration of 1910 before the Permanent Court of Arbitration). That entire dimension of the term's legal significance goes unmentioned.
Bouvier also does not address Native American and indigenous fishing rights, which in the Pacific Northwest (the apparent source of his citation) were already being contested in ways that would generate a long line of federal treaty rights litigation. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier's definition would have no indication that "fishing banks" could appear in that context.
No other Law Mind shelf dictionaries provide entries for this term, leaving Bouvier as the sole historical dictionary source. The sparse treatment across historical dictionaries is itself informative: the term was treated as ordinary geographic description requiring little legal elaboration, even as substantial bodies of law were built around the rights to use these areas.
Jurisdictional Note
In U.S. federal law, jurisdiction over offshore fishing grounds is now primarily governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which established the exclusive economic zone framework and regional fishery management councils. State jurisdiction generally extends to three nautical miles offshore. In international contexts, UNCLOS provides the governing framework for most nations, though the United States has not ratified UNCLOS and operates under customary international law and bilateral agreements for many offshore fisheries matters.