In early September 2008, China’s official media reported a number of cases of ocean contamination. One example occurred last month in Qingdao City at the sailing venue for the 2008 Olympics.
A fast-growing seaweed covered the entire coastline of the city, threatening to make the city unfit for the Olympic event. Authorities spent more than 60 days, with 4,800 boat cruises and 40,000 shifts, to clear the waters for the race.
At present there are over 200 offshore bodies of water in China that are seriously contaminated. There are many different kinds of these contaminants.
Once such a contaminant enters a body of water, it will quickly cause oxygen deficiency, killing sea birds and marine lives. The result is the creation of large “ocean deserts” or “dead sea” areas—that is, areas with low oxygen levels.
These areas are increasing at such a fast pace in China, the official media has had to call for attention to and treatment of the problem.
‘Desertification’ of the East China Sea
The East China Sea is one of the largest “ocean deserts” in the world. Marine lives cannot exist there for lack of oxygen. When the oxygen level in sea water decreases to three milligrams per liter, most stocks of fish and shellfish will either leave or die of suffocation.
According to www.caijing.net.cn, China’s Finance and Economics website, as early as October 2006, a United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) Report placed the estuaries of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River on the list of additional “ocean deserts.”
In 2005, the then China General Administration for Environmental Protection started an analysis on the Yangtze River estuary and adjacent waters and land areas. Included were eight river cities in Jiangsu Province, six coastal cities in Zhejiang Province, Shanghai, and waters off the Yangtze estuary and the Hangzhou Bay. In all, the study covered a land area of 41,440 square miles and a water area of 15,200 square miles.
The samples collected from the sea floors revealed that one third of the explored water area had no meiofauna, or small invertebrates that live at the sea bottom, indicating a serious “desertification” of the ocean floors.
The Culprit: Pollution
As China’s pollution intensifies, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous are pouring into the sea from the Yangtze River. Experts think the excessive nutrient salts lead to the fast growth of different varieties of seaweed.
Given the right temperature and light, seaweed can spread to form “red tide.” Ultimately, the seaweed, having absorbed all the nutrients, starts to fall toward the sea bottom where it becomes food for bacteria. This process consumes large amounts of oxygen, and thus an area of oxygen deficiency comes into being.
Since the 1970s, there have been over 300 documented “red tides” in China, with the number quadrupling every decade and the scope of the problem trending upwards.
The assessment and analysis of the quality of sea water reveals that the bio-environments of 53 percent of China’s offshore drainage outlets are listed as below or way-below standard, with no improvement in condition for meiofauna.
Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province are good examples. The 2007 Jiangsu Province Communiqué on the Quality of Marine Environments indicated that 98.2 percent of the province’s estuary drainage outlets were below standard, with 55 out of 56 of them exceeding the limit. The bio-environment of 26.1 square miles of water area near drainage outlets is the worst, listed as Category IV polluted water.
The 2007 a Zhejiang Province Communiqué on the Quality of Marine Environments indicated that 96.7 percent of its drainage outlets were below standard.
The province claims a total sea area of 16,960 square miles, with a coastline of 4,021 miles, ranking the first in the nation. Of the 30 drainage outlets supervised and assessed last year, 29 were below standard.
In the waters of 13 major drainage outlets, 53.9 percent of their bio-environments were described as poor or extremely poor.
The Daunting Task of Controlling Pollution
The pollution of the sea waters by sewage from major rivers in China continues to increase. Statistics indicate the waste flowing into the sea from major rivers, such as the Yangtze River, the Zhujiang River, the Yellow River, and the Minjiang River, stood at 14.07 million tons in 2007, up 1.8 percent over the previous year.
An ocean specialist in Jiangsu Province who did not want to reveal his name said that uncontrolled economic growth is the root cause of the alarming pollution off Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. He believes that the governments at various levels in the coastal provinces should be held responsible for the pollution problem.
Two years ago, Chinese ocean experts had warned that if no timely measures were taken to deal with pollution, the Bohai Sea would become a “dead sea” in a decade or even sooner. They estimated that even if sewage stopped draining into the Bohai Sea immediately, it would probably take at least 200 years for the water to become as clean as it once was.
Original Chinese Article: http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/8/9/14/n2262167.htm