The East Asia Hydrographic Commission (EAHC) is composed of nine Member States (MSs) which includes :- China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Joined the EAHC on 16 Aug 2005), Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The Commission was formed within the framework of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) to work out regional cooperative programmes through the endeavors of national hydrographic offices for the provision of adequate and timely hydrographic information for marine navigation in the region.

The South China Sea (SCS) is one of the world's busiest international sea lanes. More than half of the world's supertanker traffic passes through the region's waters. Over half of the world's merchant fleet (by tonnage) sails through the SCS every year.

The SCS is covered with paper charts produced by littoral MSs of the EAHC as well as by some countries outside the region. MSs of the EAHC have produced large scale ENCs covering their own waters, particularly their major ports. There are in the market some commercially developed electronic products which are either prepared in proprietary formats or containing unofficial data with very infrequent updating. However, official and high quality small scale ENCs conforming with the established IHO standard are not yet available for covering the SCS. The EAHC MSs decided to cooperate closely and urgently resolve this situation to facilitate mariners the most up-to-date chart information for voyage planning and safety of navigation in the SCS.

In July 2004, the EAHC formed the SCS ENC Task Group (SET) to carry out the ENC production. A number of paper charts ranging from a scale of 1:200,000 to 1:1,250,000 and ENCs produced by the littoral MSs were used as source data. The most up-to-date data had been chosen for the production with surveys conducted as recent as 2003. These MSs had generously shared with the EAHC the copyright of the data depicted from these selected paper charts and ENCs.

The compilation scale of the SCS ENC is 1:700,000 and the intended usage is categorized as General Navigational Purpose. The SCS ENC data is compiled in accordance with the ENC Product Specifications of the IHO Transfer Standard for Digital Hydrographic Data (Publication S-57 Edition 3.1).

It was the view that if the SCS ENCs could be freely and widely available to the mariners, it would further enhance the safety of navigation in the region. This in turn could reduce the chances of environmental damage from grounding and oil pollution which have tremendous cost impact. Hence, the Commission decided to provide the SCS ENCs to the users free of charge.

We are aiming at a wide distribution and we would allow third parties such as Hydrographic Offices outside the region, chart agents and ENC centres to distribute the SCS ENCs. These third parties need to obtain distribution permission from the EAHC and they should not charge their customers for the SCS ENCs.

Individual user shall register at the SCS ENC Download page. Email containing a password to access the SCS ENC Download page as well as the Updating page will be sent to the user upon registration.

The SCS ENC will be updated at a monthly interval. Registered users will receive notification by email when the updates are available for download.