calm · 34 Contested sea lanes

South China Sea

Spratly / Scarborough

Why it matters: Grey-zone maritime-militia and coast-guard confrontations along key trade routes.

Local map · live AIS

under way slow stationary

Fused signal timeline · 21 days

💨 12kt · moderate transit favourable

No dated open-source events in the last 21 days for this box.

Daily satellite snapshot of South China Sea — Daily satellite context NASA GIBS · VIIRS/NOAA-20 true color · 2026-09-06 Daily true-color snapshot (2026-09-06) — context only; too coarse to resolve individual vessels. Open in NASA Worldview ↗

Assessment

South China Sea is showing conditions near its structural baseline; open-source coverage is holding steady. No recent open-source reporting was retrieved for the box. Metocean: 12 kt wind, 1.4 m seas — transit favourable.

What changed

›Conditions: 12 kt / Bft 4, seas moderate — favourable for transit.
›No other material change in monitored feeds.
›No other material change in monitored feeds.

Metocean conditions

Wind12 kt

Gusts16.9 kt

Beaufort4

Wave ht1.4 m

Swell1.14 m

Visibility24 km

Sea statemoderate

Transit favourable

Open-Meteo, box centroid, at build time.

Updated 7 Sept 2026, 10:21 UTC · narrator: rule-based · bbox [111, 8, 118.5, 12.5]