China seeks naming rights for deep sea explorations

The State Oceanic Administration has come up with names for their undersea features in China's quest for deep sea exploration and willingness of servicing the international society.

On Friday, the State Oceanic Administration announced 124 new Chinese names of seabed areas. All the new names are given to features, 101 in the Pacific oceans, 15 in the Indian and 8 in Atlantic, that have been discovered or explored by Chinese oceanic research facilities, according to Li Bo, vice-director of China ocean mineral resources research and development association.

The association is China's official organization engaged in exploration and development of ocean floor and subsoil.

Twenty of the names will be proposed on October 12 at the annual meeting of Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) in Brazil. So far, a total of 43 names for undersea features submitted by China have been approved by the SCUFN, a subordinate branch of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans and is an international organization with senior authority and substantial influence in the field of undersea feature names.

In the past two decades, according to Li, the COMRA has organized 36 cruises for ocean scientific research. Being able to name undersea features in far seas means China's ability of oceanic exploration has covered a considerable scale of waters.

"It was a little late for China to participate in the naming work of 2010, but the development is very fast," Li said. "We will propose more names in the future."

Since China's participation in the naming work of 2010, the COMRA established a naming system for seabed areas based on the country's oldest poetry collection and names of famous Chinese people.

The "Classic of Poetry," also known as the "Book of Odes," is the oldest known collection of Chinese poetry. It dates from the 11th to 7th centuries BC, and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries for over two millennia.

In this year's proposal, a hill on the bottom of southern Atlantic was named Xunmei, which comes from the Book of Odes, and means extremely wonderful.

Another hill in eastern Pacific was named after Su Shi, a great poet and calligrapher in Song Dynasty (960-1279).