Macclesfield Bank is an elongated sunken

atoll An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gro ...

of underwater reefs and shoals in the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Ph ...

. It lies east of the

Paracel Islands The Paracel Islands, also known as the Xisha Islands () and the Hoang Sa Archipelago ( vi, Quần đảo Hoàng Sa, lit=Yellow Sand Archipelago), are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. The archipelago includes about 130 small coral ...

, southwest of

Pratas Island Pratas Island,, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also known as the Tungsha Islands or the Dongsha Islands (), is a coral island situated in the northern part of the South China Sea administered as part of Cijin District, Kao ...

and north of the

Spratly Islands The Spratly Islands ( fil, Kapuluan ng Kalayaan; zh, c=南沙群島/南沙群岛, s=, t=, p=Nánshā Qúndǎo; Malay, id, Kepulauan Spratly; vi, Quần đảo Trường Sa) are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. Composed ...

. It is about long from southwest to northeast, and about wide at its broadest part. With an ocean area of it is one of the largest atolls of the world. The Macclesfield Bank is part of what

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

calls the

Zhongsha Islands The Zhongsha Islands is a Chinese term for a collection of two skerries, many entirely submerged banks, seamounts, and shoals in the South China Sea. There are in fact, no islands in the Macclesfield Bank, the main part of Zhongsha. The Sca ...

, which includes a number of geographically separate submarine features, and also refers to a county-level administrative division.

History

Macclesfield banks reportedly were named after British ship named ''Macclesfield'', though there is some ambiguity which vessel this was. By one account, the vessel was the British

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sou ...

East Indiaman East Indiaman was a general name for any sailing ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India trading companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vesse ...

, which mapped and recorded the shoals in early 1701 on her way back to England from China. An alternate origin story attributes the name to an HMS ''Macclesfield'' that reportedly ran aground in the vicinity of these shoals in 1804. In April 1888 , under the command of

William Usborne Moore Vice admiral William Usborne Moore (March 8, 1849 – March 15, 1918) also known as W. Usborne Moore was a British naval commander, psychical researcher and spiritualist.

, with Percy Bassett-Smith as Surgeon-Naturalist, mapped the banks. They found a depth of inside the bank, with the rim rising to within of the surface. Dredging found live corals, showing that although entirely submerged, the bank was an actively growing reef.

Geography

The broken

coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of Colony (biology), colonies of coral polyp (zoology), polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, wh ...

rim of Macclesfield Bank, with a width of up to , has depths of at Pygmy Shoal on the northeast end of the bank and depths of 11.6 to elsewhere. Within the lagoon, Walker Shoal marks the least known depth of . In general, the central

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into '' coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons ...

is very deep, with depths up to . While the bank is everywhere submerged, with no drying shoals, it is usually visible due to the turbulence it causes, the seas becoming "high and confused" in heavy weather. The elongated atoll consists of the following shoals, clockwise starting in the northeast, and at the end the six named shoals in the lagoon: ¹ inside lagoon

Territorial claims

Macclesfield Bank is claimed, in whole or in part, by

and

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 no ...

(Republic of China). Some sources state that the Philippines claims this underwater feature. However, Jose Zaide, a Filipino diplomat of ambassadorial rank, has written that the Philippines does not claim the Macclesfield Bank. Moreover, Macclesfield Bank is not within UNCLOS 200 or Philippines EEZ. As the bank is entirely underwater, some scholars have raised questions regarding the legality of territorial claims upon it with regards to the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international agreement that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. , 167 ...

(UNCLOS). However, the Philippines filed claim for another underwater feature, the

Benham Plateau The Benham Rise, officially known as Philippine Rise, is an extinct volcanic ridge located in the Philippine Sea approximately east of the northern coastline of Dinapigue, Isabela. The rise has been known to the people of Catanduanes as Kalip ...

, in 2008 in compliance with the requirements of UNCLOS and UN officially approved the claim in April 2012.UN to decide on Phl claim on 13-M hectare Benham Rise
, August 16, 2011, Philippine Star.UN approves PH territorial claim to Benham Rise
, April 28, 2012, Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Notes

References

External links

Nautical Information

Taiwanese List
{{authority control Archipelagoes of the Pacific Ocean Fishing areas of the South China Sea Disputed reefs Territorial disputes of China Territorial disputes of the Republic of China Lists of coordinates Zhongsha Islands Township-level divisions of Hainan Reefs of the South China Sea Atolls of the Pacific Ocean