A Chinese fishing boat has run aground on a World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines, roughly 1,600 kilometres from China’s nearest major landmass, authorities said on Tuesday.
The vessel, with 12 crew members, was found stranded in the shallows of Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea just before midnight on Monday, coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Commander Arman Balilo said.
“This is a small fishing boat, but we are wondering how they strayed into Tubbataha. Apart from illegal entry, we are investigating them for possible poaching as well,” Balilo said.
Balilo said the boat was to be pulled off the reef on Tuesday and then towed to the nearby island province of Palawan, where the fishermen would be detained and questioned by authorities.
Balilo said Chinese fishermen frequently strayed into Philippine waters, but this was the first time in recent years that they had been detected as far south as Tubbataha.
The grounding of the vessel comes as the Philippines and China are locked in a bitter dispute over competing territorial claims to the South China Sea.
China claims nearly all of the sea, even waters approaching the coasts of the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia.