Beijing has been placed at the top of the first Marine Awareness Index, which was issued by the State Oceanic Administration on Friday.

The National Marine Awareness Development Index (MAI) put China's overall score at 60.02, with only 10 provincial regions out of 31 passing the 60 points benchmark, and all others missed it slightly.

"In general, this shows the not-so-good general marine awareness of Chinese people," said Wang Jimin, professor at Institute of Ocean Research, Peking University, a leading executioner of the research. "But meanwhile this is a relative value, showing the difference among the provinces, we need to focus on the regional differences rather than a 'pass' or a 'fail'."

The study reveals that most coastal provinces score relatively good results. The report relates regional development levels of oceanic industries to this phenomenon. Most western parts of China, such as Tibet and Qinghai, are notable laggards.

However, Sichuan, an inland province in southwest China, made into the top 10. Experts have suggested that the abundant media exposure of ocean-related contents, as well as the general extraverted characteristics which lead to a stronger desire to comment on things in general, may lead to this "unusual" result.

According to researchers, the index is a study combining big data as well as traditional questionnaires.

"It is a research that grasps and analyzes 4 million pieces of data retrieved on search engine, news and Weibo posts based on IP addresses that reflect different locations, as well as a 2,000-student survey of high school students," said Wang. "So they demonstrate the relative gap of awareness among the provinces more comprehensively."

"It's a quantitative result which researchers can conduct further analysis and subsequent studies on," said Wang Bin, deputy head of the General Office of SOA. "Ideally we may better and conduct this study again in the future, hopefully seeing a rise of people's awareness."