[LINK] "Who rules the waves?"

[rfmcdonald]

The Economist notes the inaguruation of a new Chinese government research program aimed at exploring the environment of the South China Sea.

IMPERIALISM and oceanography often go hand in hand. The British Admiralty’s surveys of the world’s coastlines and shallow seas during the 18th and 19th centuries brought a wealth of scientific knowledge. They also did no harm to the ability of British merchantmen to navigate the world—and of British warships to dominate it.

Viewed from that perspective, China’s southern neighbours might be slightly nervous about a meeting held in Shanghai on January 26th and 27th, which gathered the country’s oceanographers (including several who work abroad) to discuss a project called South China Sea-Deep. As its name suggests, this project is intended to explore the South China Sea, a patch of water with an area of 3.5m square kilometres and a maximum depth of 5.5km that China’s government regards (despite competing claims from every other country with littoral waters there) in much the same way that ancient Romans regarded the Mediterranean: mare nostrum.
[. . .]

South China Sea-Deep is led by Wang Pinxian, of Tongji University in Shanghai, a doyen of the field. To assist him, he will be able to call on the services of Jiaolong, China’s latest deep-submersible vehicle (pictured, planting a flag), which is designed to dive to a depth of 7km. Last July Jiaolong managed 3.8km. The craft’s handlers aim to push that to 5km this summer and to the full amount next year.

The project is partly inspired by a study carried out aboard a vessel called Dayang Yihao in 2007, of the then little-known Southwest Indian Ridge. This is part of the system of mid-ocean ridges that form as the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust move apart—a process known as sea floor spreading. Among other things, the researchers on board Dayang Yihao located rich deposits of copper, lead and zinc, associated with hot springs called hydrothermal vents that are often found near mid-ocean ridges. And when the International Seabed Authority, which looks after such matters, promulgated regulations last May for the exploration of these sorts of deposits, China quickly made an application to do so in the Southwest Indian Ridge.

The South China Sea, too, is thought to be a product of sea floor spreading—though the spreading in question happened between 32m and 16m years ago. And Lin Jian of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, one of the leaders of the expedition to the Southwest Indian Ridge, is also running a sub-project intended to study the tectonic evolution of the area. This should help settle the questions of how the South China Sea came into existence, how much of its floor is basaltic ocean seabed, of the sort spewed out of mid-ocean ridges, and how much is continental rock that simply happens to be below sea level.

The second part of the project, a study of sedimentation and the ancient climate, will follow up Dr Wang’s original examination of the area, in 1999, which was part of an international effort called the Ocean Drilling Programme. Despite all the disclaimers, this will be the bit of most interest to the oil and gas industry.

Go, read.