Macclesfield Bank is an elongated sunken atoll of underwater reefs and shoals in the South China Sea. It lies east of the Paracel Islands, southwest of Pratas Island and north of the Spratly Islands. It is about 130 km (81 mi) long from southwest to northeast, and about 70 km (43 mi) wide at its broadest part. With an ocean area of 6,448 km (2,490 sq mi) it is one of the largest atolls of the world. The Macclesfield Bank is part of what China calls the Zhongsha Islands, 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 East Indiaman Macclesfield, which mapped and recorded the shoals in early 1701 on her way back to England from China. An alternative origin story attributes the name to an HMS Macclesfield that reportedly ran aground in the vicinity of these shoals in 1804.

In April 1888 HMS Rambler, under the command of William Usborne Moore, with Percy Bassett-Smith as Surgeon-Naturalist, mapped the banks. They found a depth of 40 to 50 fathoms (73 to 91 m) inside the bank, with the rim rising to within 9 fathoms (16 m) of the surface. Dredging found live corals, showing that although entirely submerged, the bank was an actively growing reef.

Geography

The broken coral reef rim of Macclesfield Bank, with a width of up to 8 km (5 mi), has depths of 11.8 m (39 ft) at Pygmy Shoal on the northeast end of the bank and depths of 11.6 to 18 m (59 ft) elsewhere. Within the lagoon, Walker Shoal marks the least known depth of 9.2 metres (30 ft). In general, the central lagoon is very deep, with depths up to 100 metres (330 ft). 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:

inside lagoon

Territorial claims

Macclesfield Bank is claimed, in whole or in part, by China and Taiwan (Republic of China).

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 (UNCLOS). However, the Philippines filed claim for another underwater feature, the Benham Rise, in 2008 in compliance with the requirements of UNCLOS and UN officially approved the claim in April 2012.