How to Use territorial waters in a Sentence

territorial waters

plural noun
  • The yacht, said the YCG, was not flying a flag and was sailing in Yemeni territorial waters.
    Michael Verdon, Robb Report, 2 May 2023
  • The strike took place once the balloon was no longer over land but was still within U.S. territorial waters.
    Tara Copp, ajc, 22 Feb. 2023
  • The balloon is now out of Hawaii’s airspace and territorial waters.
    Mike Brest, Washington Examiner, 1 May 2023
  • But the officer was plotting the position of the boats on the wrong territorial waters map.
    Megan Rose, ProPublica, 24 June 2019
  • The object is now out of Hawaii's airspace and not above U.S. territorial waters, an official said.
    Eleanor Watson, CBS News, 1 May 2023
  • In addition to the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia are a few other claimants of the islands and the territorial waters around them.
    Emily Feng, NPR, 11 Apr. 2024
  • Russia claims one of its ships chased a U.S. Navy warship out of its territorial waters by threatening to ram it.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 25 Nov. 2020
  • In the Baltic, the pipelines enter the territorial waters of Russia, Germany, and Denmark.
    Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Some First Nations in Canada have protested the presence of net pens in their territorial waters.
    Anchorage Daily News, 8 July 2018
  • At its narrowest, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, and ships passing through it must enter the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
    Washington Post, 22 June 2019
  • Both Turkey and Greece claim territorial waters in the Aegean reaching six nautical miles from their coasts.
    Paul Tugwell, Bloomberg.com, 11 Sep. 2020
  • The bill would provide benefits to veterans who served on ships in territorial waters off the coast of Vietnam.
    Denise Coffey, Courant Community, 19 June 2018
  • China’s live-fire drills in the strait would mark a direct challenge to what Taiwan defines as its coastline and territorial waters.
    New York Times, 3 Aug. 2022
  • The vessel and the crew are still held, Houthi officials said, pending a legal case for breaching Yemen’s territorial waters.
    Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2022
  • The flight details suggested that the missile was fired on a higher-than-usual angle to avoid reaching the territorial waters of Japan.
    Time, 24 Mar. 2022
  • The research also found that many of the open-ocean species in the fin trade, such as blue sharks, thresher sharks, and oceanic white tip sharks, were likely caught within territorial waters, not in the open oceans, as expected.
    David Shiffman, National Geographic, 27 Oct. 2020
  • The majority of fins in the trade come from sharks in territorial waters, and dozens of countries have enacted full or partial bans on shark finning, shark fishing, or shark fin soup.
    National Geographic, 25 Nov. 2020
  • Bangladesh authorities found the trawler in the country's territorial waters late Wednesday -- after spending 58 days adrift at sea -- off the coast of the southern district of Cox's Bazar.
    Sugam Pokharel, CNN, 18 Apr. 2020
  • Since the Ukraine invasion, Latvia has increased surveillance of its airspace, land and territorial waters, the ministry said.
    Paulina Villegas, Washington Post, 24 Sep. 2023
  • Specifically, a part of the Black Sea that's very sensitive to Russia: inside the territorial waters of Crimea.
    David A. Andelman, CNN, 28 June 2021
  • For decades, China’s government has been declaring that tiny spits of land in the sea are in fact islands, entitled to territorial waters that extend out for miles.
    Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2022
  • According to its data, the U.S. warship had been staying in the area for the past few hours, at times getting closer but well off Cuban territorial waters, which stretch out to 12 nautical miles.
    Michael Wilner and Nora Gámez Torres The Miami Herald (tns), arkansasonline.com, 14 June 2024
  • The three leaks were discovered in Swedish and Danish territorial waters, with one located near the island of Bornholm.
    Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 27 Sep. 2022
  • The missile was apparently fired on high angle to avoid reaching the territorial waters of Japan.
    Kim Tong-Hyung and Mari Yamaguchi, USA TODAY, 24 Mar. 2022
  • Many years after the bloody fiasco that was our war in Vietnam, it was revealed that the Maddox was likely not on the high seas but well within North Vietnam’s territorial waters.
    Kevin Baker, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
  • Bob Maves, an analyst for the agency who specializes in the war, said 420 of them were believed to have been lost along Vietnam’s coastline or within its territorial waters.
    BostonGlobe.com, 1 Aug. 2021
  • During those forays, the Chinese ships were within Japan's territorial waters, cruising about four to six miles (six to 10 kilometers) off the islands, Japan said.
    Brad Lendon and Yoko Wakatsuki, CNN, 6 July 2020
  • This indicated the missile was fired on a higher-than-usual angle to avoid reaching the territorial waters of Japan.
    Kim Tong-Hyung and Mari Yamaguchi, Anchorage Daily News, 24 Mar. 2022
  • That means Pyongyang can conduct tests without the risk of having its test missile veer into, or near, U.S. territorial waters in the Pacific.
    Andrew Jeong, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2020
  • That’s despite a counterargument that there are routes to Martha’s Vineyard that remain entirely within state territorial waters.
    Eva Roytburg, Fortune, 6 June 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'territorial waters.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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