States jostling for territorial dominance in the South China Sea have inflicted untold injury on the maritime environment, in accordance to a new investigation by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) and China Ocean Institute, both equally dependent in the U.S. The results, presented in a latest report, are the “most complete photograph to date” of the devastation wreaked by industrial overfishing, rampant island-setting up and reckless giant clam harvesting by bordering states, the authors say. The minimal-lying but resource-rich features of the South China Sea have been fiercely contested among the bordering states for a long time. The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam and China vie for management of the islets and reefs, some of which only breach the ocean area at excessive very low tide. But amid the wrestle, the marine environment is staying ravaged. The scale of the injury inflicted by competing states on the region’s coral reefs, which depict the foundations of the South China Sea’s marine foodstuff webs, can’t be overstated, in accordance to report co-creator Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia plan at the AMTI. “It’s the most significant lively man-manufactured reef destruction in human history,” Poling explained at a press briefing in Bangkok on Feb. 20. The AMTI is section of the Washington, D.C.-based mostly Heart for Strategic and Intercontinental Studies (CSIS), which is funded in component by the governments of the U.S. and Taiwan the latter is among the the claimants to a disputed section of the South China Sea. The CSIS has also extended advocated for a stronger U.S. military presence…This post was originally published on Mongabay