The Paracel Islands, the mysterious territory that is a large black spot on Google Maps

@ElentirENG ES 6·01·2024 · 23:46 1

Google Maps is a very useful tool for discovering distant places without leaving home, but it has some dark areas.

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The largest of these dark areas is an archipelago located in the center of the South China Sea: the Paracel or Paracelsus Islands. These islands were discovered by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The archipelago is made up of 130 islands, islets and coral reefs, with a maritime area of ​​about 15,000 square kilometers. One of the most curious elements of these islands is the Dragon Hole, the largest maritime sinkhole in the world, located in the eastern atoll of the islands and with a depth of about 300 meters.

Currently, the Paracel Islands are a territory disputed by three countries. The archipelago is at a practically identical distance from the coasts of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China, which are two of the countries that claim its sovereignty (the third is democratic China, Taiwan). Communist China has de facto control of the islands, which have more than a thousand inhabitants.

The fact that surrounds these islands with mystery is that they appear as a large black spot on Google Maps. Another curious fact is that this Google service only shows the generic name of the archipelago, but does not indicate the names of each island.

NASA's website contains very few satellite photos of these islands, and those that do exist are images from more than two decades ago. Above these lines we can see a photo taken on August 16, 1997, rather blurry.

On May 3, 2002, NASA took this other satellite photo of the islands. It's better and clearer than the photo taken five years earlier, but it doesn't offer much detail.

The most mysterious point of these islands is to the northwest: it is an area that appears as a black spot.

Zooming in on that island shows this. The northern half is under a cloud.

Other areas of the archipelago also appear covered by a black spot. Here we see the sub-eastern area of ​​the islands.

And here we see the southwestern area. Taking into account that the communist People's Republic of China has control of the islands, it seems that this communist dictatorship does not have a special interest in knowing what is there.

When zooming in on some of the islands they appear veiled. Here we can see the large atoll located in the southeastern part of the archipelago.

Here we see another atoll that appears blurry, as if the image had been taken on a cloudy day.

Other parts of the archipelago appear clearer when zoomed in on them, like this atoll. However...

...when zooming in on its southwestern part we find this. Is this part of another image taken on a cloudy day?

On Google Maps there is an island that is clearly visible when zoomed in: it is called Lincoln Island (although its name does not appear on that website).

On this island we can see the port built by communist China, at the moment with few facilities and still under construction, judging by the image.

Another island for which there are clear photos is Woody Island. Paul Spijkers published this photo in Airlines, taken on April 9, 2009 and showing a landing strip occupying a large part of the surface of this island.

Woody Island is home to a military base of the People's Republic of China. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative published a report in August 2017 showing the constructions that this dictatorship is doing in the Paracel Islands. Some photos show military installations. Here we see a Chinese Shenyang J-11 fighter on Woody Island, photographed on March 29, 2017.

In this other image, taken on January 28, 2017, we see hangars at the Chinese Woody Island air base, and a military helicopter next to one of them. According to the aforementioned Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative report, this Chinese base has 16 small hangars for fighter aircraft, as well as four larger hangars: "Most worrying, China in early 2016 deployed HQ-9 surface to air missiles to the island. Despite reports in July that the missile platforms had departed, they still appear to be deployed along the north shore of Woody. China also test-fired anti-ship cruise missile from the island in mid-2016, but it is unclear whether or not those platforms remain", says the report. That would explain so much secrecy around these islands.

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Fotos: NASA / Google Maps / Asia Maritime Transparency Iniciative / Paul Spijkers.