US Navy warship challenges Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea
Jan. 21 - ..The USS Benfold sailed around the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in what the Navy calls a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP), Lt. Mark Langford, spokesperson for the US 7th Fleet, said in the statement...
...The islands are also claimed by Vietnam and self-ruled Taiwan but in Chinese hands for more than 46 years. The islands have been fortified with People's Liberation Army (PLA) military installations.
The US Navy statement said the Benfold also challenged the claims of Vietnam and Taiwan.
"All three claimants require either permission or advance notification before a military vessel engages in 'innocent passage' through the territorial sea. Under international law ... the ships of all states -- including their warships -- enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea. The unilateral imposition of any authorization or advance-notification requirement for innocent passage is unlawful," the US Navy statement said.
Asserting freedom of navigation rights involves sailing within the 12-mile territorial limit from a nation's coastline recognized by international law... more from BBC news
The name Paracel is of Portuguese origin, and appears on 16th-century Portuguese maps. The archipelago is approximately equidistant from the coastlines of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Vietnam; and approximately one-third of the way from central Vietnam to the northern Philippines.[5] The archipelago includes Dragon Hole, the deepest underwater sinkhole in the world.[6][7] Turtles and seabirds are native to the islands, which have a hot and humid climate, abundant rainfall and frequent typhoons. The archipelago is surrounded by productive fishing grounds and a seabed with potential, but as yet unexplored, oil and gas reserves. quoted from Wikipedia
Architecture, development and geological control of the Xisha carbonate platforms, northwestern South China Sea
Newly acquired seismic data allow improved understanding of the architecture and evolution of isolated carbonate platforms on the continental slope of the northern South China Sea. The Xisha carbonate platforms initiated on a basement high, the Xisha Uplift, in the early Miocene and have remained active to the present. Their distribution is limited to pre-existing localized, fault-bounded blocks within the Xisha Uplift so individual platforms were small in size at the beginning of the Miocene. However, during the middle Miocene, the platform carbonate factories flourished across an extensive area with 55,900 km2. The platforms began to backstep in response to a relative sea-level rise in the late Miocene. Platform-edge reefs, patch reefs, pinnacle reefs, atoll reefs and horseshoe reefs, all developed on various platforms. The distribution of platform carbonates shrank significantly during Pliocene-Quaternary time to isolated carbonate platforms, represented today by Xuande Atoll and Yongle Atoll. Tectonics and eustasy were the two main controls on platform development. Tectonics controlled both the initial topography for reef growth and the distribution of platforms, including those that survived the drowning event associated with the late Miocene rapid relative sea-level rise. Eustasy controlled high-frequency carbonate sequence development.
Architecture, development and geological control of the Xisha carbonate platforms, northwestern South China Sea
Newly acquired seismic data allow improved understanding of the architecture and evolution of isolated carbonate platforms on the continental slope of the northern South China Sea. The Xisha carbonate platforms initiated on a basement high, the Xisha Uplift, in the early Miocene and have remained active to the present. Their distribution is limited to pre-existing localized, fault-bounded blocks within the Xisha Uplift so individual platforms were small in size at the beginning of the Miocene. However, during the middle Miocene, the platform carbonate factories flourished across an extensive area with 55,900 km2. The platforms began to backstep in response to a relative sea-level rise in the late Miocene. Platform-edge reefs, patch reefs, pinnacle reefs, atoll reefs and horseshoe reefs, all developed on various platforms. The distribution of platform carbonates shrank significantly during Pliocene-Quaternary time to isolated carbonate platforms, represented today by Xuande Atoll and Yongle Atoll. Tectonics and eustasy were the two main controls on platform development. Tectonics controlled both the initial topography for reef growth and the distribution of platforms, including those that survived the drowning event associated with the late Miocene rapid relative sea-level rise. Eustasy controlled high-frequency carbonate sequence development.
