China ships leave Benham

Two Chinese vessels spotted earlier navigating around the Benham Rise are now outside the Philippine exclusive economic zone.

This was confirmed by the Philippine Navy spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, Commodore Roy Trinidad, in a radio interview on Sunday.

He said the country’s forces would continue its air surveillance fights on the resource-rich Benham Rise, a submerged landmass located east of Northern Luzon.

In his X (formerly Twitter) post over the weekend, maritime expert Ray Powell said Chinese vessels were “loitering” in the northeast corner of Philippine Rise within the country’s EEZ as of 1 March.

Powell, the United States Air Force official and former defense attaché, identified the Chinese survey ships as the Haiyang Dizhi Liuhao and Haiyang Dizhi Shihao.

Powell said that the Shihao left a port at Longxue Island in Guangzhou, China on 26 February and sailed southeast through the Luzon Strait.

Trinidad said Powell’s information was an “open source monitoring” — with ships tracked through an automatic identification system or AIS system.

“These two Chinese survey vessels did not [turn] off their AIS that’s why they were monitored,” he noted.

He said the Naval Forces Northern Luzon was about to deploy an air surveillance flight over the weekend, the day the Chinese vessels were monitored. However, they could not push through a surveillance mission due to inclement weather.

“They will attempt an air surveillance flight today. Although, as of yesterday at 3 p.m., they already monitored that the Chinese vessels were already outside our EEZ,” Trinidad said.

He said the mission would identify which Chinese vessels were spotted near Benham Rise, adding that the Philippines is monitoring the area 24/7, weather permitting.

The Philippine military “has not yet reached Benham Rise” because it is “farther and more remote” compared to the detachments in the West Philippine Sea.

“The sea conditions in Benham are different because it faces the Pacific Ocean. In the West Philippine Sea, there are times when the seas are rough, but the eastern seaboards are rougher,” he stressed.

The Benham Rise is an extinct volcanic ridge and part of the country’s extended continental shelf in the Philippine Sea, approximately 250 kilometers east of the northern coastline of Dinapigue, Isabela.

In 2008, the Philippines filed its claim for Benham Rise in compliance with the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS.

In April 2012, the UN officially approved the Philippines’ “sovereign rights” in the Benham Rise — the first claim of the Philippines approved by an international body since the colonial era.

China maintained that the Philippines had no sovereignty over the Benham Rise despite the UN-backed international ruling, and it continued to deploy Chinese survey ships in the region.