The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) revealed Monday, April 7, that it has been monitoring a Chinese research vessel off Batanes which it suspected of surveying the northern island close to Taiwan for five days already.
READ MORE: https://mb.com.ph/2025/4/7/chinese-research-vessel-surveying-batanes
READ MORE: https://mb.com.ph/2025/4/7/chinese-research-vessel-surveying-batanes
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NewsTranscript
00:00Coast Guard, using the dark vessel detection of the Canadian government, was able to monitor
00:09the presence of Chinese research vessel Songshan Dashui.
00:16It has an overall length of 114 meters and a tonnage of 2,300.
00:26It departed Guangdong Province, China last 31 March, and it entered our exclusive economic
00:47zone up north last April 2, around 9 p.m.
00:56And since then on, it stayed within our own exclusive economic zone, which is seemingly
01:02conducting maritime scientific research because of its consistent patterns of navigation.
01:15As of 7 a.m. today, the distance of the Chinese research vessel is 103.86 nautical miles
01:25from Itbayat, Batanes.
01:29As we speak right now, the Commandant of the Philippine Coast Guard has already directed
01:34our Coast Guard aircraft to challenge this Chinese research vessel and for us also to
01:42document such unlawful and unlawful activity of the Chinese research vessel in our own
01:49exclusive economic zone up north.
01:52And it would clearly show that what they're doing is they're observing a certain pattern
01:59and that what they're doing is not continuous and expeditious as well.
02:03As far as we know, the Chinese government does not have any clearance or authority for
02:10them to conduct such marine scientific research within our own exclusive economic zone up north.
02:17Well, there are many reasons why the Chinese research vessels are conducting their own
02:24marine scientific research, and I don't want to speculate much more further, but again,
02:30there are a lot of data that you can get in conducting marine scientific research.
02:36Such activities of the Chinese government conducting marine scientific research within
02:41our own exclusive economic zone without clearance or authority given by the national government
02:46is a clear violation of UNCLOS.
02:49We need to make China realize that they still need to respect the sovereign rights of other
02:55countries and not allowing them and calling them out to stop doing scientific research
03:03in somebody else's exclusive economic zone.