The Bashi Channel is a

waterway A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary b ...

between Y'Ami Island of the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

and

Orchid Island Orchid Island, also known by other names, is a volcanic island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan Island. The island is part of Taiwan. It is separated from the Batanes of the Philippines by the Bashi Channel of the Luzon Strait. It is g ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. It is a part of the

Luzon Strait The Luzon Strait (Tagalog: ''Kipot ng Luzon'', ) is the strait between Taiwan and Luzon island of the Philippines. The strait thereby connects the Philippine Sea to the South China Sea in the western Pacific Ocean. This body of water is an im ...

in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. It is characterized by windy storms during the rainy period, June to December. Txu-oclc-6557994-index-456

The Bashi Channel is an important passage for military operations. Both the Philippines and Taiwan dispute the ownership of the waters because both sides say the region lies within 200-nautical-mile from their shores. The channel is also significant to communication networks. Many of the

undersea communication cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried tel ...

s that carry data and telephone traffic between Asian countries pass through the Bashi Channel, making it a major potential point of failure for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. In December 2006, a magnitude 6.7

submarine earthquake A submarine, undersea, or underwater earthquake is an earthquake that occurs underwater at the bottom of a body of water, especially an ocean. They are the leading cause of tsunamis. The magnitude can be measured scientifically by the use of the ...

cut several undersea cables at the same time, causing a significant communications bottleneck that lasted several weeks.PINR report
Taiwan Quake Exposes Internet Vulnerability
, published 15 January 2007

References

External links

* * Straits of the Philippines Straits of Taiwan Straits of Asia Borders of the Philippines Borders of the Republic of China International straits Landforms of Batanes Landforms of Pingtung County {{philippines-geo-stub

See also

References

External links