The Cook Islands is the first island country in the Pacific to lodge a claim to extend its continental shelf, and it is one of the biggest that will be submitted to the United Nations.
The Pacnews agency reports that the Cook Islands deputy Prime Minister, Sir Terepai Maoate made the submission to the Secretary of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Hariharan Pakshi Rajan, at UN headquarters in New York.
The Cook Islands stands to gain more than 400,000 square kilometres of additional continental shelf and the resources within that zone.