Barque Canada Reef

Barque Canada Reef (Filipino: Bahura ng Mascardo); Malay: Terumbu Perahu; Thuyền Chài Reef (Vietnamese: Bãi Thuyền Chài); Mandarin Chinese: ; pinyin: Bǎi jiāo, is a reef on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The reef has been occupied by Vietnam since 1988. It is also claimed by China (PRC), Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan (ROC). Barque Canada Reef is a shallow, long (nearly 30 km) and narrow (less than 4 km at its widest point) coral atoll in the Dangerous Ground zone. The nearest island is Amboyna Cay, just over 20 nautical miles to the south-west. The government of Vietnam began a major project to develop Barque Canada Reef in 2022. This activity involved dredging and reclaiming land, as well as erecting new structures such as harbors and sea walls. Just in 2024, its territory artificially increased from 238 acres (96.31 hectares) to 412 acres (166.73 hectares). an area equivalent to 75% of Monaco.

This entity is oriented along a northeast-southwest axis, measuring approximately 15.8 nautical miles (29.3 km) in length and up to 1.9 nautical miles (3.5 km) in width. At the southwestern corner of the reef, there is a prominent rock rising above the sea surface, known as Lizzie Webber Reef (Da Ha Tan). Along the northeastern third of the reef’s length extending southwest, several individual rocks emerge above the water. The lagoon within the coral ring is about 13 km long and has an average width of 2 km. Within this lagoon, there are three small sandbanks that rise approximately 0.5 meters above the water during low tide but are submerged by about 1 meter during high tide. The area of the coral foundation of this reef is around 49.5 km², while the lagoon itself covers approximately 16.9 km².

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