Chinese dredging imperils South China Sea coral reefs: report

Radio Free Asia

Dredging and other maritime activities by countries claiming territory in the South China Sea, primarily the People’s Republic of China (PRC), have devastated coral reefs, with vast areas destroyed or badly damaged, a new report found.

“In recent decades, increased fishing, dredging, and landfill, along with giant clam harvesting, have taken a devastating toll on thousands of species found nowhere else on earth,” the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) reported in mid-December 2023.

More than 25 square kilometers, or 6,200 acres, of coral reef have been destroyed by island building efforts in the South China Sea, with 75% of the damage done by the PRC, according to AMTI, a project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C-based think tank.

An additional 66 square kilometers, about 16,300 acres, of coral reef were damaged due to giant clam harvesting by Chinese fishermen.

Industrial fishing by the PRC and Vietnam, especially the use of bottom-trawling in which a net is towed along the seabed, has seriously damaged the marine environment. Overall fish stocks in the South China Sea are depleted, with catches stagnating since the 1990s despite more fishing, the report said.

AMTI researchers analyzed coral reef destruction caused by island building activities of South China Sea claimants, also including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan. Beijing claims almost the entire strategic waterway as its territory and continues to disregard an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling dismissing the claim as legally invalid.

To support their claims, the PRC and others have established maritime outposts and developed artificial islands through invasive methods such as dredging the seabed to gather material for landfill, or land reclamation.

“China has caused the most reef destruction through dredging and landfill, burying roughly 4,648 acres [18.8 square kilometers] of reefs,” AMTI reported. That’s about three times more than Vietnam, with the next highest total.

The report, “Deep Blue Scars: Environmental Threats to the South China Sea,” sheds light on the PRC’s dredging method: “Its cutter suction dredgers would slice into the reef and pump sediment through floating pipelines to shallow areas to deposit it as landfill. This process disturbed the seafloor, creating clouds of abrasive sediment that killed nearby marine life and overwhelmed the coral reef’s capacity to repair itself.”

Beijing conducted the bulk of its artificial island building from 2013-17 and by 2022 had fully militarized the three largest reefs — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross.

Other claimants have used less destructive dredging methods.

“Until recently, Vietnam had primarily used clamshell dredgers and construction equipment to scoop up sections of shallow reef and deposit the sediment on the area targeted for landfill,” AMTI reported. “This method is slower and causes less collateral damage to surrounding areas.

“More recently, however, Vietnam has turned to cutter suction dredgers like China’s. This large-scale expansion of Vietnam’s South China Sea outposts remains ongoing and will have major consequences for the surrounding marine environment,” the report found.

Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have developed maritime features to a much lesser extent and taken efforts to minimize environmental impact.

“Dredging will be less harmful with more sedimentation and plume control during the dredging and reclamation works,” said Kamaruzaman Legiman, a Malaysian engineering expert. “Additional mitigation can also be implemented via frequent water quality inspection to avoid any unwanted damages.”

AMTI also reported that giant clam harvesting has damaged vast areas of coral reef: “The harvesting of giant clams for their remarkable shells has become popular in recent decades because of their resemblance to elephant ivory, which is now extremely difficult or illegal to obtain.”

The shells are carved and sold as jewelry or statues in China for up to $106,000 each.

Chinese fishermen use an extremely harmful method of “dragging specially made brass propellers” to dig up reef surfaces and “to more easily harvest both live and dead clams attached to the reef,” AMTI reported.

As a result, many South China Sea reefs now bear arc-shaped scars.