The Spratly Islands has some interesting facts. The islands contains around 100 small islands within its region. It’s located around the South China Sea, close to the Philippines territory. This article is going to elaborate about the geographic location of the Spratly Islands and its facts.
The Geographic Location of the Spratly Islands
Geographically, the Spratly Islands is located in the South China Sea, in the boundary of some countries (China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei). According to some article from CIA, the islands are rich of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and fishery products. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim the Spratly Islands as their territory, meanwhile Malaysia and Brunei declare some parts of the islands as their territory as well. Besides this island, you also need to know about the Galapagos Island.
For the economic point of view, water area around the Spratly Islands is quite unfriendly for the fishermen, as according to the CIA website, the islands have some kinds of protected marine organisms. The area has such big potential of natural resources such as oil and natural gas, however, no one tries to do some explorations yet.
This is the geographic location of the Spratly Islands and its facts:
- Coordinate: 8o38’N, 111o55’E
- Location: Southeast Asia
- Area: Around 5 km2
- Occupant: Most of the islands are uninhibited, some of them are used as military base of China
- Transportation: 4 airports and 3 helipads (helicopter base)
You could reach the Spratly Islands through various routes, either from Malaysia or the Philippines. If you want to use plane, then you need to go from Malaysia, since you are only able to use boat from the Philippines.
From Malaysia, you could use commercial flight to Layang-Layang Island (Swallow Reef), which is a tourist destination that has access from Kinabalu. You could use marine route from the Philippine or Vietnam as well, however, it’s usually used for cargo, not not an official route for tourist.
Spratly Islands Dispute
The Spratly Islands have been claimed by many countries up to this day. Vietnam submitted legal proceeding to fight the Spratly Islands ownership with China, and still no result though. Different approaches have been done by other countries. Malaysia, for instance. They opens tourism access to the Spratly Islands. The Philippines government sends people to live around the islands and built offices in the Palawan Island. Meanwhile, China built military base around the Spratly Islands. Besides this interesting fact, you should also read about the Bermuda Triangle.
Other Facts of Spratly Islands
Speaking of the Spratly Islands, we cannot only talk about its pretty landscape, but also about its unresolved dispute within. Here are some further facts about the Spratly Islands.
- The Spratly Islands is such an active route, since it connects many countries around it. The Islands route provides a significant economical advantage through the marine activities. According to Vox, 30% of the global economic activities relies on the marine route around the Spratly Islands. There are 23 types of seas in the world.
- China has been building military bases since 2014. They also created some artificial islands for the military purposes, and it was exposed to the world in 2016.
- The US military and the China navy has some dispute histories. In 2016, the US navy did some patrol in the South China Sea, yet they got warned by the China navy.
- The Spratly Islands contains around 11.000 barrels of oil and 190 cubic trillion of natural gas. This fact could be the main reason why China desperately wants to claim the Spratly Islands.
- The Spratly Islands have been claimed by four different countries for a while, there are Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Since 2000, they have faced any possible way to get the Spratly Islands. However, the ownership status of the islands is still not clear until today.
- Not only the natural resources, the Spratly Islands also have rich amount of fishery products. It has such tremendous kinds of it, such as coral reefs and various kinds of fish. Coral reefs are important for the marine ecosystems. Even the Philippines government built an office specifically to protect the marine organisms around Palawan Island. There are 10 kinds of marine natural resources.
That’s the article of the geographic location of the Spratly Islands and its facts. Hopefully it’s useful for you.