The Xisha Archipelago lies in the northwest part of the South China Sea. The most attractive feature of this group is that there are two arrays of islands; in the east lie the seven islands of the Xuande group, including the main island of Yongxing and the Dongdao Island(Bird Island); in the west are the eight islands of the Yongle group, including Jinyin, Ganquan and Jinqing islands. There are also reefs, sandy beaches and shoals. This island group is known to local fishermen as the "seven easts and eight wests." From the air, they look like two strings of white-ringed sapphires, set into the vast blueness of the South China Sea.

There's a saying to the effect that if you haven't seen the South China Sea, you can have no idea of vastness of the ocean, and if you haven't seen the Xisha Archipel ago, you can't appreciate the mystery of the sea. As the Xisha Archipelago is far from the mainland and rarely visited, the surrounding seawater is so clear that you can see 40 meters down.

The South China Sea is located in the tropical zone, its southernmost sector close to the Equator, making the annual average sea temperature a warm 26¡æ. The temperature, salinity and transparency of the water are ideal for the growth of corals. Therefore, almost all the islands in the South China Sea are encircled with coral reefs. It is China's main area of reef-building corals and the coral resources are particularly rich in the Nasha and Xisha archipelagos. Indeed the Xisha group alone boasts l27 types of coral belonging t0 38 species.

Reef-building corals are formed by reef-building stony polyps and calcium-rich algae, with chinks and cracks filled with shells and masses of polyps. Stony polyps enjoy the reputation of "ocean architects." They are bottom, dwelling tiny tube worms living in tropical and sub-tropical seas. A single polyp is as small as a needle head, but a great colony of them secretes a great deal of calcium carbonate, over time gradually forming huge corals of different shapes and colors. Zooxanthella live inside the stony polyps and if the environment changes, they abandon the polyps, causing the corals to "bleach" and die.

The Xisha boasts over l00 species of stony corals, often named after their shapes-staghorn, brain, rose and mushroom corals£®They also vary in colorfrom red, orange and purple to green and yellow.

Apart from the stony corals, the Xisha islands are noted for their dozens of species of patterned and colored soft corals that cling like sponges to coral rocks. They feel softer than thick carpets under foot. Then, living in the cracks of coral crevices or wherever algae gather, are colorful sea urchins and mollusks of every shape and size, including conches and egg-shaped cowries, often seen drifting in the Xisha waters are blue "coin jellyfish" because it looks like a coin, blue jellyfish with tentacles, no bigger than two centimeters, resembling the shape of the caps worn by Portuguese sailors in the past, so they are known as "Portuguese soldiers."

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