BEIJING: China has placed 10 seismometers capable of tracking use of explosives and measuring earthquakes in the
Indian Ocean. The announcement on Thursday came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Qingdao, a seaside city in China, to attend the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on June 9 and 10.
Five more devices will be planted in the Indian Ocean and retrieved within a year to study their recordings, the Science and Technology Daily reported. At the same time, Chinese officials are worried about possible criticism that the devices will be used for military purposes.
Speaking to the official media,
Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of International Relations, said research in the southwest Indian Ocean is usually misinterpreted by foreign media as military activity. This is not true, he said.
“Every sovereign nation has the right to conduct scientific research in international waters, so their argument does not stand,” Hu told the Global Times.
State media said ocean bottom seismometers can operate for extended periods of time on the seafloor to gather data from earthquakes and artificial vibrations in the deep sea. The device has a lifespan ranging from several months to a year before being retrieved for further research.
This is the first time China has placed seismometers in the southwest Indian Ocean’s Junhui hydrothermal field, according to Qiu Lei, head of the team’s earth physics department, the report said. China has placed seismometers in three nearby hydrothermal fields which it reportedly named Longqi, Yuhuang and Duanqiao.
The new seismometers in Junhui have been placed where there was previously no ocean-bottom seismographic observation, Qiu was quoted by the Science and Technology Daily as saying. The new seismometers have larger battery capacities to allow them to operate for more than a year, Qui said. He said the findings of the seismometers, especially minor earthquakes that are difficult to observe otherwise, will provide valuable data for the exploration of polymetallic sulphide and help researchers understand the structure of the region.