China has opened its first deep-sea research institute in Sanya, Hainan Province, which will be significant for resource exploitation and improvements to naval expertise, the Global Times reported.
After passing inspection, the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) officially started its operations on Tuesday, May 10, the China News Agency reported.
The IDSSE is the first scientific research base devoted to the study of the deep seas. It is also China's first public platform for deep-sea research and technological experiments.
"The deep sea has a wealth of resources including mineral, biotic and petroleum resources, and there are more than 40 billion tons of petroleum in the South China Sea alone," Gao Shu, director of the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences at Nanjing University, told the Global Times on Wednesday, May 11. "Therefore, it is necessary to enhance scientific research capabilities there."
The CAS said in its website that since 2012, Chinese scientists with the CAS have joined numerous research projects related to the South China Sea which include scientific expeditions in the area.
"China is a big country both in land and in sea, but in the past China has put emphasis on development on land, so [the opening of] the institute shows that the exploitation of ocean resources in China has arrived at a new stage," Wang Xiaopeng, an expert on maritime and border studies at the CAS, said.
Wang said that since many global ocean resources have been modified when the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea took effect in 1982, several countries have shown interest in scientific research on the use of ocean resources.
Meanwhile, Gao added that studies on the complex environment of the ocean can help countries with advanced military technology to improve their naval expertise.
The Xinhua News Agency reported that Tansuo 1, which will be used as the mothership for a new deep-sea submersible, was delivered on May 5 to the CAS in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.
The report said that the 94-meter ship has a full displacement of 6,250 tons, while the submersible can reach a depth of 4,500 meters.
The submersible will dive to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the future, according to the report.