South China Sea Takes Center Stage At the Fourth Annual Symposium of the International Pacific Research Center, several researchers presented their recent findings on South China Sea climate. A group has now formed under the leadership of IPRC’s Tangdong Qu to coordinate the research in this important climate region. The following pages feature the discovery of how the play among winds, ocean, ...

Ocean warming can strongly impact marine fisheries; notably, it can cause the “mean temperature of the catch” (MTC) to increase, an indicator of the tropicalization of fisheries catches. In this contribution, we explore MTC changes in three large marine ecosystems (LMEs) along China’s coasts, i.e., the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea LMEs, and their relationships to shifts of se...

Quaternary climatic cycles have influenced marine organisms' spatial distribution and population dynamics. This study aimed to elucidate the evolutionary influences of contemporary and glacial physical barriers on the population structure, demography and colonization history of the mudskipper (Periophthalmus modestus) based on a mitochondrial gene segment (ND5) from 131 individual fish sampled ...

The freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has drawn an extensive international concern in recent years. The main reasons leading to skepticism are the disputes in the South China Sea over islands sovereignty and maritime delimitation, extra-regional state’s intervention, and some ASEAN member states’ wish to countervail China with the help of extra-regional states. In fact there is no pr...

A review of environment problems in the coastal sea of South China Qiuying Han a , Xiaoping Huang b , Qianguo Xing a & Ping Shi a a Key Laboratory of Coastal Zone Environment Processes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Coastal Zone Environment Processes, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, 264003, P.R. China b LED, So...

The political and military atmosphere has heated in the South China Sea over the past few years, both bilaterally and multilaterally. However, not every country in the South China Sea has aligned interests. While the Mischief Reef incident of 1994-1995 saw ASEAN united against Chinese assertiveness, each country has grown more focused on isolated issues less relevant to the nations as a group.

Water mass distribution was studied by analyzing historical hydrographic data in the South China Sea. Despite considerable modification of characteristics as a result of mixing, waters of both salinity maximum and minimum of the North Pacific origin were traced on the density surfaces around 25.0 and 26.73 su, respectively. In the salinity maximum layer, property distribution suggests an intrus...

forty seven sediment cores recovered from the south china sea coasts along the east coast of peninsular malaysia were analysed for as, cd, cr, cu, hg, ni, pb and zn using instrumental neutron activation analysis. the results indicate a homogeneous distribution except for as and pb in all stations. assessment of heavy metal pollution in marine sediments requires knowledge of pre-anthropogenic me...

Linking China’s interest in the maritime waters arises from the geo-strategic importance of Sea Lines of Communications (SLOCs) vital to the oil supply of the country. China is building strategic relationships and developing a naval capability to establish a forward presence along the SLOCs that connect China to the Middle East and to Africa. The entire stretch includes South China Sea, Indian ...