7. MONTENEGRO

This country report was written by Aleksandar Joksimovic, Institute of Marine Biology, University of Montenegro, Kotor, Montenegro.

7.1 Introduction

The length of the Montenegrin coastline is about 300 km, of which about two-thirds (200 km) face the open sea and one-third forms (105.7 km) the Boka Kotorska Bay. There are only a few small islands in Montenegrin waters, with total island coast length of about 11 km.
The interior waters of Montenegro cover about 360 km2, territorial waters (extending 12 nautical miles, or 22.22 km, from the coastline) about 2 000 km2 and the epicontinental belt around 3 900 km2. The total sea area of Montenegro comes to about 6 400 km2.

The Montenegrin shelf area is relatively narrow, extending only a few nautical miles in the northern part, in front of the Boka Kotorska Bay, but going over 20 nautical miles in front of the Bojana river estuary (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Map of Montenegro