AMTI determined when a ship was engaged in research based on its course and speed as revealed by AIS. The interactive map below shows the location of each research activity undertaken by these vessels across the Indo-Pacific last year. Military vessels are not required to broadcast AIS under the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea Convention. The data is necessarily incomplete because it does not include all naval surveillance activities, including those of the United States. This analysis relies on the automatic identification system (AIS) signals broadcast by these ships and collected on the commercial platform Marine Traffic.
The data confirms that China operated by far the largest fleet of government research vessels in the region. To better understand the scale of such research activity in the Indo-Pacific, AMTI tracked state-owned or -operated survey vessels in waters beyond their government’s legal jurisdiction over the last year. Australian defense officials reportedly described an early 2020 survey by China’s Xiang Yang Hong 01 near Christmas Island as intended to study the routes of Australian submarines traveling to and from the South China Sea. Research vessels purportedly involved in scientific research can also use their instruments for naval reconnaissance, gathering intelligence on foreign military facilities and vessels. Oceanographic data is crucial for undersea operations, as water and seabed conditions affect the ability to detect submarines. Such research can serve both civilian and military purposes. This was the case with the Shiyan 1, which India expelled from its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in September 2019, and the Zhang Jian, whose operations in the Philippine EEZ last summer drove President Rodrigo Duterte to hastily declare a ban on all foreign research vessels in his country’s waters. Others have conducted marine scientific research without the permission of coastal states.
State-owned Chinese vessels have engaged in oil and gas surveys on the continental shelves of its neighbors, as the Haiyang Dizhi 8 did off the coast of Vietnam for four months last year. This is especially true of China’s large fleet.
Marine research vessels have been making waves in the Indo-Pacific recently.
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