Roughly, the Spratly Islands refers to an area 500 nautical miles long by 400 nautical miles wide in the South China Sea. Situated between China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, the Spratly Islands only barely count as islands. The archipelago has as few as 12 proper islands and 150 to 400 significant chunks of land. Dubbed "nautical features," some of them are fully submerged at high tide. Combined, the islands and little land nubs have a surface area of less than two square miles. They do, however, have tremendous potential, thanks to the plentiful in the fish that live among the islands to the oil and natural gas beneath the sea in the area.