CCG ships ‘completely abandon’ Scarborough due to typhoon – monitor

SeaLight’s monitoring shows four China Coast Guard ships at 110 nautical miles to the west of the Scarborough Shoal. COURTESY OF RAY POWELL

MANILA, Philippines — China Coast Guard (CCG) ships may have “completely abandoned” Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal due to Typhoon Emong (international name: Co-May), a West Philippine Sea monitor said on Thursday.

In 2012, China began to have effective control of Panatag Shoal after its stand-off with Manila.

Since then, at least two CCG ships have been stationed within the vicinity of the lagoon at any given time, according to local authorities, barring the entry of the Philippine Coast Guard and local fisherfolk.

Four CCG ships left Panatag Shoal on Wednesday night and “are now waiting out” the typhoon 110 nautical miles to the west of the shoal, according to SeaLight director Ray Powell.

Emong, which passed by the West Philippine Sea, made landfall Thursday in Agno, Pangasinan, in the western section of the country near the shoal.

“From what I can tell they’ve completely abandoned the shoal,” Powell, program head of Stanford University’s Gordian knot Center for National Security Innovation, told Inquirer in a message on X (formerly Twitter).

Powell’s SeaLight could track CCG ships because it had their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) on.

Warships, however, are not required by international law to turn on their AIS and could “run dark.”

“There may be more if there are others running dark,” he said of Chinese vessels possibly staying in the shoal’s vicinity.

Meanwhile, Powell said all the Chinese maritime militia ships had left since July 18, even before the bad weather started.

However, he pointed out that CCG ships and militia could return once the storms or typhoons leave.

“We can expect the China Coast Guard & militia ships to return to Scarborough Shoal to resume their exclusion zone enforcement against the Philippines after Typhoon Co-may turns back to the northeast,” Powell said.

CCG’s so-called “exclusion zone enforcement” outright flouts the 2016 arbitral ruling, which declared the area as a traditional fishing ground of the Philippines, China and Vietnam.

The 2016 arbitral award made the ruling after former president Benigno S. Aquino brought Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2013, or a year after the tense standoff over Panatag Shoal. /gsg