(Yicai Global) Sept. 22 -- China's new generation of marine scientific research vessel "Scientific" verified exposed combustible ice on the seafloor in South China Sea while carrying out an exploration planned by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The detected structure was published on international academic journal 'Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems' today. Scientific has detected two exposed combustible ice spots at the 1,100-meter deep seafloor through utilizing laser probe carried by an unmanned submersible, CCTV.com reported.

Laser probe conducted an on-site detection on combustible ice as well, and scientists discovered that lots of free gas such as methane and hydrogen sulfide are inside the combustible ice, which is the first-ever verified scientific conclusion by utilizing laser spectroscopic data.

Combustible ice, whose scientific name is natural gas hydrate, is embedded in deep-sea sediment or in permafrost. The exposed combustible ice is rare, providing the best test ground for scientists to research its formation, decomposition and components.

China has finished its first pilot extraction in July this year. It was a 60-day continuous extraction, with a total of 309,000 cubic meters of gas produced.