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"You have the federal government saying they're willing to do a settlement with the state that acknowledges the state has title to a very large proportion of submerged land lying under the marine waters in Southeast Alaska," said Dave Bedford, director of the Southeast Alaska Seiners Association, of the Tongass concession.

States generally own marine waters within their boundaries, extending three miles from shore, but the federal government can expressly retain some marine waters when a state enters the union.

But even if the court rules that Alaska owns the land under Glacier Bay, Congress could control some of the activities there, state attorneys said. Still, a ruling in the state's favor would be a big step forward, said Assistant Attorney General Joanne Grace in Anchorage.

"It's possible that Congress could change its mind (about banning commercial fishing) if the state had a judgment of title," she said.

The Supreme Court appointed a special master, Gregory Maggs, a law professor in Washington, D.C., to hear arguments on state and federal motions and make recommendations on judgments to the high court.

Oral arguments before Maggs are scheduled for February, and he could rule by summer, state attorneys said. A trial before Maggs is scheduled for the summer of 2004 on any points that aren't resolved by then. The parties also can argue before the Supreme Court about Maggs' recommendations.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice, in a memo filed with Maggs last month, said Alaska does have a valid claim to title to most of the marine submerged lands in the Tongass National Forest, whose boundary extends up to 60 miles seaward of the Alexander Archipelago.

But federal attorneys said Congress retained title to many marine submerged lands within the Tongass, some of which haven't been identified. They asked Maggs to delay a recommendation on Alaska's claim until the state and federal government can meet to identify what should remain in federal hands.

The state, in a response filed with Maggs on Friday, declined to settle the disputed parcels of submerged land because it has an obligation to the public not to give up state land, said Assistant Attorney General Grace.

"We can't compromise, in other words," she said.

Grace said she didn't expect the state's stance to affect Maggs' recommendation on who owns the Tongass submerged lands. Federal attorneys declined to comment.

Also unresolved are motions by the parties related to submerged lands in Glacier Bay and what are called "doughnut holes" - areas more than three miles from shore in Southeast's Alexander Archipelago.

The state has argued that Congress never intended the bay itself to be part of Glacier Bay National Park, which began as a national monument in 1925. The state says boundaries written in law were generalizations meant to include all the islands in the bay and along the outer coast without having to specify each one.

Federal attorneys said Congress intended the park's main feature, the bay, to be part of it. They said the purpose of the park - which gets about 390,000 visitors a year, nearly all by water - would be undermined if the bay were excluded from it.

"There are some clear connections between the bay portion of the park and the rest of the park," said John Quinley, a National Park Service spokesman in Anchorage. "The bay has been a clear focus of federal management over the years."

The bay grew as glaciers retreated, he said. Today, salmon run between freshwater streams and the bay, bears feed in the intertidal zone, and birds that nest in uplands catch fish in the bay, Quinley pointed out.

Regarding the so-called doughnut holes, the state says Alaska waters extend three miles from the seaward edge of the Alexander Archipelago generally.

The federal government says the state's boundary is measured three miles from each island and land mass, which leaves some of Southeast's inland waters in federal hands.

The legal decision may turn on how the United States historically has treated the doughnut-hole waters, and how an international treaty defines them.

Not every Alaskan wants the state to win the case on each count. Two Southeast Natives sought to intervene on the Tongass issue, saying the federal government wouldn't argue the case strongly enough. They said the court's decision might affect their ability to harvest herring roe on kelp, a subsistence food. Maggs rejected their request.

In recent years, some Southeast residents have asked the Federal Subsistence Board to create subsistence fisheries in Tongass marine waters that the state doesn't allow. But the board declined, saying the ownership of submerged lands hadn't been determined.

"The federal board's jurisdiction did not extend into marine waters, and that's what we have had to tell the folks," said Bill Knauer of the federal Office of Subsistence Management in Anchorage.