used by vessels transiting between Australia and the Java Sea or East Asia. The two straits are always critical for East Timor, both in relation to its own international trade and as routes for internal transport. In Ombai Strait, internal East Timorese ferry services operate regularly between Dili and both Atauro and Oecusse. If there were any disruption in the flow of commercial shipping on the Malacca-Singapore route, the Ombai-Wetar route would also have a crucial role to play in global trade, especially for the Asia-Pacific region. Military The ships and aircraft of all nations, including warships, auxiliaries, and military aircraft, enjoy the right of unimpeded transit passage through straits such as the Ombai-Wetar route and their approaches. Submarines are free to transit the route submerged, as that is their normal mode of operation. The channels of the Ombai-Wetar route are extremely deep. East Timor has refused advances by China seeking off-shore oil rights and permission to set up radar arrays ostensibly to counter illegal fishing. The two straits therefore provide a route for undetected access by nuclear-powered submarines between the two oceans they connect. In particular, they are an alternative deep water route for submerged U.S. submarines moving between Guam and stations in the Indian Ocean via the Molucca Passage, Indonesia, which separates Sulawesi from Halmahera. Although the Ombai-Wetar route is a less direct link between Guam and the Indian Ocean than the Lombok-Makassar route, it is useful because it has limited traffic and very little surveillance, with the consequence that passing submarines are less likely to be tracked. By the mid-1970s, the Ombai-Wetar route had been identified as one of five international straits essential for passage by U.S. ballistic missile submarines, the others being Gibraltar, Malacca-Singapore, Lombok and Sunda. In 1977, a paper published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London, ranked the Ombai-Wetar route as the second-most-important strait in the world to U.S. defense interests, after the Strait of Gibraltar. The two straits are now also considered by China to be strategically significant. Economy Fishing In East Timor, involvement in fishing is low by comparison with other small island countries. Along the north coast of Timor and around Atauro, including within the strait, fishing levels are higher than elsewhere in the country, other than in pockets along parts of the south coast. Many of the fishers fish part time or seasonally, and are otherwise