In September, the Atlas Series of Undersea Features of China’s Surrounding Seas, China’s first thematic atlas on the study and naming of undersea features in the waters under China’s jurisdiction, was officially published and distributed by China Ocean Press. This atlas series is led by Researcher Wu Ziyin from the Key Laboratory of Submarine Geosciences, MNR of the SIO, and completed by relevant advantageous units in China after years of joint research.

The Atlas Series of Undersea Features of China’s Surrounding Seas includes three atlases: Atlas of Undersea Features of Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and East of Taiwan Island, Atlas of Undersea Features of Northern South China Sea, Atlas of Undersea Features of Southern Hainan Sea. The entire book adopts a combination of plane graphs, space patterns and information tables to scientifically present 769 naming achievements of undersea features in China’s surrounding waters, including information such as Chinese and English standard names, detailed terrain features, boundaries and the origin of Chinese and English names of undersea features.

In order to compile this high-quality atlas series, the scientific research team systematically collected new data and information such as multi-beam bathymetry obtained in China’s surrounding waters over the past 30 years, and used the advanced technical methods and unified software platform to conduct unified and standardized processing of multi-beam bathymetry data from different projects, different ages, different equipment and different formats to achieve a unified accuracy standard. In other non-multi-beam survey areas, a large number of published nautical charts and seabed topographic and geomorphic maps as well as some public data were collected, and the multi-source data fusion processing method was adopted to organically fuse topographic and geomorphic data from complex sources, thus forming a high-resolution and high-precision digital depth model covering the surrounding waters of China.

The publication of the series has filled the gap in this field, established the “Xinhua Dictionary” of undersea features in the waters under China’s jurisdiction and their geographical names, standardized the undersea features in China’s surrounding waters and their names, and provided a scientific basis for the standardized publication of sea related maps, works and papers in China.