Beijing Alert Over ‘Spy Turtles’ Gets a Laugh but Signals a Serious Effort To Gain Advantage at Sea

The warning from Beijing’s Ministry of State Security reads less like a government communiqué and more like the premise of a rejected spy thriller. Officials declared that an “invisible secret war” is unfolding beneath China’s coastal waters, and that foreign intelligence agencies are using sensor-equipped sea turtles and fish to fight it.The missive issued on June 12 and ominously titled “Under the deep blue, undercurrents are surging” claims animals are being weaponized to map the country’s underwater defenses and identify weak points in its coastal perimeter.“Relatively large marine animals with sensors attached” have been observed swimming through sensitive Chinese waters, collecting data on temperature, salinity, and ocean currents, and then transmitting it overseas in real time via satellite, the ministry claims. It adds that foreign actors had deployed detection buoys — solar-powered wave gliders that drift silently through the water while harvesting maritime data — capable of building a covert surveillance network of Chinese sea lanes and of tracking the acoustic signatures of Chinese submarines. Fishermen were told to report anything unusual, with rewards reportedly ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 yuan — roughly $7,000 to $73,000 — for turning over foreign surveillance hardware.No country was named and no evidence was presented. Yet, the warning reflected an intensifying war beneath the waves where the tools for spycraft are stranger and more sophisticated than most people realize. Beijing’s Claim Isn’t as Outlandish as It SoundsWhile China’s allegation was laughed off in the daily news cycle, it is hard to dismiss entirely. Tagging marine animals with sensors is, in fact, standard scientific practice worldwide. Since 2002, sea turtles, seals, and other marine animals fitted with transmitters have collectively contributed more than 500,000 oceanographic profiles to international ocean monitoring networks. The data they collect — water temperature, salinity, depth — dictates how sonar performs and is precisely the kind of information that is invaluable for determining where submarines can hide and where they can be found.A former member of the U.S. Central Command’s Active Cyber Defense Team, JP Castellanos, tells The New York Sun that “to hide a submarine or hunt an enemy’s, a navy doesn’t just need a map of the ocean floor, it needs a real-time map of the water itself.”“Changes in temperature, pressure, and salinity create boundaries called thermoclines that can bend, bounce, or completely block sonar waves, creating shadow zones where a submarine can hide,” he adds. “China is panicking because whoever has the best data on the water column controls the underwater battlespace. If foreign agencies are collecting this hydrology data, they are essentially mapping the blind spots in China’s coastal defenses.”However, he added that Beijing’s bold claim of spy turtles sounds unlikely. “Fitting wild sea turtles or large fish with sensors to act as covert intelligence assets is highly inefficient,” Mr. Castellanos said. “Reptiles and fish can’t be trained to swim tactical routes.” What America is Actually Doing Beneath the WavesThe United States operates one of the most sophisticated undersea surveillance systems ever built. The Navy’s Integrated Undersea Surveillance System utilizes surface ships dragging sonar arrays, shore-based processing stations, and seabed hardware, listening for anything moving underwater.Zephr.xyz chief executive Sean Gorman is a former subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure Task Force with a background in mapping, positioning, navigation, and timing technologies. He tells the Sun that recent expansion of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System has been significant.“The Navy is upgrading seabed cable arrays and investing roughly $3 billion in seven new ocean surveillance ships,” he said. “The driver is China’s submarine fleet, projected to reach 80 boats by 2035.”In Singapore last month, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announced a new project, under the AUKUS defense pact, to co-develop weapons and systems for unmanned underwater vehicles. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2027.“The most current cutting-edge development is the dramatic shift toward autonomous systems,” Mr. Castellanos observes. “The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia are co-developing a unified fleet of unmanned underwater vehicles and modular payloads slated for rapid deployment starting in 2027.”Beijing’s ‘Underwater Great Wall’ Beijing has spent years developing what it calls its “Underwater Great Wall,” a web of seabed sensors, surface ships, sonar arrays, and unmanned submersibles intended to monitor submarine movements throughout its near seas and deny adversaries the same freedom of underwater maneuver the United States has enjoyed for decades.State media reported that the system would provide real-time, high-definition, three-dimensional observations connected via optical fiber to shore-based command centers. Chinese ships have been spotted laying undersea cables among outposts in the disputed Paracel Islands, which analysts believe could be a listening network to protect China’s primary submarine base at Yulin on Hainan Island.Despite a vast underwater defense system, fabricating claims of spy turtles serves another purpose — domestically, it casts foreign adversaries as primitively deceptive while obscuring the far more unsettling reality that sophisticated Western surveillance may already be threading through China’s carefully constructed underwater perimeter. Beijing’s underwater wall may be more porous than the one that inspired it and protected China’s northern border for 2,000 years. The Great Wall held for centuries because China controlled the terrain above it. Underwater, that certainty does not exist, and Beijing knows it, but it is determined to gain an advantage.“The undersea domain is increasingly contested. China is pursuing a unified approach that links strategy, naval modernization, seabed infrastructure, and resource extraction into a single, connected effort,” the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Mike Brookes, recently testified to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “U.S. undersea advantages cannot be assumed to endure without sustained investment, innovation, and strategic focus.”

Beijing Alert Over ‘Spy Turtles’ Gets a Laugh but Signals a Serious Effort To Gain Advantage at Sea

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