China's first deep-sea research institute has opened in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province, which experts said will be meaningful for resource exploitation and improvements to naval technology.

The Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) passed an acceptance inspection and began official operations on Tuesday, the China News Agency reported Wednesday.

The IDSSE is the first scientific research base for study of the deep seas and is also China's first public platform for deep-sea research and technological experiments, media reported.

"The deep sea has a wealth of resources including mineral, biotic and petroleum resources, and there are more than 40 billion tons of petroleum in the South China Sea alone. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance scientific research capabilities there," Gao Shu, director of the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences at Nanjing University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Since 2012, Chinese scientists with the CAS have participated in several research projects related to the South China Sea, including scientific voyages in the area, according to the CAS website.

"China is a big country both in land and in sea, but in the past China has put emphasis on development on land, so [the opening of] the institute shows that the exploitation of ocean resources in China has arrived at a new stage," said Wang Xiaopeng, an expert on maritime and border studies at the CAS.

Wang added that scientific research on the use of marine resources has been a hot topic in many countries since the release of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, which reallocated many global ocean resources.

Deep-sea research will also have military uses, as studies on complex marine environments can help improve naval technology, which is usually the most advanced military technology in a country, Gao added.

The mother ship for a new deep-sea submersible was delivered to the CAS in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on May 5. The 94-meter Tansuo 1 has a fully loaded displacement of 6,250 tons, and the submersible can reach a depth of 4,500 meters. It is expected to dive to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the near future, according to the Xinhua News Agency.