The long-awaited decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on a dispute between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea was released on Tuesday, and the reaction on both sides was somewhat anticlimactic. The court nullified China's nine-dash line claim as a legal basis for maritime entitlements under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Though the verdict sidestepped decisions on the actual sovereignty of occupied features in the waters, the tribunal ruled that no features within the Spratly Islands chain, the center of the dispute, counted as an island entitled to a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Even Taiwan-held Itu Aba , the feature in the Spratlys most in line with the definition of an island, was ruled a rock, thus entitled to only a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea.