The Spratly Islands lie in which body of water?
Spratly Islands Spratly Islands The Spratly Islands ( , , , ) are a disputed group of islands, islets and cays and more than 100 reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls, in the South China Sea. The archipelago lies off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, and southern Vietnam. Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly who sighted Spratly Island in 1843, the islands contain less than of naturally occurring land area spread over an area of more than . The Spratlys are one of the major archipelagos in the South China Sea which complicate governance and economics in
Spratly Islands the numerous submarine half-grabens that underlie sea bottom within the Dangerous Ground region. The geological surveys show localised areas within the Spratly Islands region are favourable for the accumulation of economic oil and gas reserves. They include thick sequences of Cenozoic sediments east of the Spratly Islands. Southeast and west of them, there also exist thick accumulations of sediments that possibly might contain economic oil and gas reserves lie closer to the Spratly Islands. In some cays in the Spratly Islands, the sand and pebble sediments form the beaches and spits around the island. Under the influence of the dominant