China Coast Guard ships back in Scarborough after bad weather

The China Coast Guard cutter with hull number 4203 is seen attacking Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and Philippine Coast Guard vessels with a water cannon in Panatag Shoal on June 20, 2025. BFAR and PCG personnel were distributing fuel to Filipino fisherfolk when the CCG vessel, along with CCG ship with hull number 3105, attacked. — File photo from Commodore Jay Tarriela

MANILA, Philippines — China Coast Guard (CCG) ships are now back in the vicinity of Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal after leaving the area due to bad weather.

Commodore Jay Tarriela, Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, said three CCG vessels returned to the shoal’s vicinity as of Thursday morning.

Tarriela said these CCG ships have hull numbers 4203, 5303, and 3502.

“Right now, because of the good weather in the West Philippine Sea, the Philippine Coast Guard monitored the presence of three China Coast Guard ships that returned in the vicinity of Bajo de Masinloc,” Tarriela said in an online briefing.

Tarriela said PCG chief Adm. Ronnie Gil Gavan also ordered the deployment of vessels near the vicinity off Zambales to conduct a maritime law enforcement mission there.

In 2012, China gained 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, local authorities have said, barring PCG and Filipino fisherfolk from coming close.

CCG ‘completely abandoned’ shoal

But last Thursday, July 24, CCG vessels left the shoal’s vicinity due to Typhoon Emong.

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

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

During that time, four CCG ships deployed in Panatag Shoal waited out the typhoon 110 nautical miles to the west of the shoal, according to West Philippine Sea monitor Ray Powell.

“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), last week.

Powell monitored the ships with hull numbers 4203, 3104, 3502, and 3304.

Based on Tarriela’s report, it appears that only the CCG-4203 returned to the shoal.

The current deployment of three other ships is still unclear.

CCG claims patrols continuous

Despite the departure of its ships in Scarborough Shoal’s vicinity, the CCG said Thursday that it has continuously conducted “combat readiness patrols” and “intensified law enforcement patrols” there since July, according to China Daily’s report.

In response, Tarriela said the PCG has not monitored such activities, noting that they even had no presence there in the past two weeks due to bad weather.

“They don’t have the authority to conduct such maritime law enforcement patrols,” Tarriela also said.

The CCG’s presence in Panatag Shoal is in line with what Powell termed as “exclusion zone enforcement,” which outright flouts the 2016 Arbitral Award, which declared the waters there as a traditional fishing ground of the Philippines, China, and Vietnam.

The international tribunal ruling was made after former President Benigno Aquino brought Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2013, or a year after its tense standoff with Manila over Panatag Shoal. /das