Marine Environment and Ecology of Bohai
Name: Yu Qianqian Student ID: S08696
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Sekou Conde
Minzu University of China
2008-2009 Academic Year
Abstract: Recently, Bohai, as the source of Circum-Bohai economic circle which was called the northern “Golden Necklace”, is in the tendency to be polluted worse, and is even pressing on towards a “dead sea”. The causes are summarized from the aspect of domestic waste, industrial wastewater, petroleum pollution , seawater intrusion and so on. Therefore, the pollution of Bohai should be treated in combined measures in terms of the source of pollution. The sustainable development was the only way to solve the eco-environmental problems of Bohai.
Keyword: Bohai, environment, ecology, pollution
Several years ago, the experts from the Chinese Marine Detection Centers made an alarm: the environment of Bohai has reach to the critical point. If we still don’t take any action to prevent the pollution, Bohai is going to be a dead sea. At that time, even we don’t discharge anything to the Bohai, it needs at least 200 years to recover itself just by exchanging water with external water body. This alarm attracted a lot of people’s attention to Bohai. More and more experts began to study the environment and ecology of Bohai. In this paper, I systemically analyze the reasons of pollution in Bohai and then try to find measures to solve it.
the status of Bohai in China
Bohai, surrounded by land in three direction, is a Semi-enclosed internal sea of China. The total area of Bohai is 7.8 square kilometers, with an average depth of 18ms, maximum depth of 86ms, north-south span of 550 km, east-west span of 346 km, coastlines of 3784 km. There are 28 main rivers flowing into Bohai, including the mother river of Chinese nation ---Yellow River. Its’ coast includes three provinces, Hebei, Liaoling, Shandong and one Municipality Tianjin.
Bohai is famous as the storehouse of fish, salt and oil in north China. Three bays and one channel, the Liaodong Bay, Bohai Bay, Laizhou Bay and Bohai channel constitute the group of ports in North China and are the gateway to the North China. Bohai is the most economically developed areas in the northern China. Its’ coast is the Circum-Bohai economic circle known as the northern "Golden Necklace". It has a great contribution to national economy of China. Those three provinces and one municipality account for 5.4% of total land of China and 17.5% of the population, create 25.78% of the gross domestic product and contribute 22% of the total imports and exports. [1] Zhu guangwen, one of the professor from Ocean technique graduate school, said “Bohai has an great influence on politics, economy and military affairs of China. The economic region in the Bohai region is important to the development of China in this century. Therefore the economic region in the Bohai region is the tache which help the economic develop from south to north and from east to west.” He added, “It will be the region with the fastest development, the biggest potential and the most profits in this century.” [2] As such an significant role in North China, Bohai will effect the development of our country. If the Bohai was dead there would be a crash on the whole country. So we can not help to ask: Is Bohai going to be dead? Who is responsible to it? And what we should do to prevent Bohai to be dead and protect Bohai?
Bohai is having the hazard to be a dead sea
As the important support system for the development of the region around Bohai, Bohai absorbs 32% of the total industrial and domestic wastewater, as well as 48% of the huge injection of pollutants with the area of 78,000 km2 and water volume of 1358 km3.[1] With the high speed economic development of Bohai Rim, the water body of Bohai is getting worse and worse. Nowadays Bohai is facing an incredible terrible environmental problem.
2.1 sewage discharge
In the past several decades, the economy of Bohai region had a really fast development. At the same time, there are an increasing number of industrial wastewater that were emitted.
The average water depth of the Bohai is only 18 meters, and Bohai is a shallow sea which is semi-enclosed, with bad pollutant carrying capacity. Three Bohai Gulf - Liaodong Bay, Bohai Bay and Laizhou Bay become the most polluted water body. According to statistics the amount of land-based polluted water accepted by Bohai every year amounted to 100 million, a variety of pollutants reach to more than 10,000 tons. [3]In 2000, national Oceanic Administration statistics show that there are 105 sewage discharge mouths in the Bohai, and the volume of polluted effluent into Bohai was 2.8 billion tons, accounting for 32% of the sewage problems of our whole country. Various types of pollution, more than 70 million tons, account for 47.7% of the volume of total pollutants into the sea. [2]What is even worse is that the the volume of pollutant become even more and the percentage become even higher.
In 2006, the statistics of the state oceanic administration’s monitoring showed that the total amount of sewage discharged from the sewage discharge mouth reached to about 38.7 billion tons. Among them, the sewage discharged into the Bohai accounts for 12.5% of the total, up to 4.8 billion tons. At the same time, of the four sea areas of China, Bohai had the highest proportion of the sewage discharge mouth which discharged sewage out of standard, about 90.4%. The excess sewage brought by Population growth, accelerated industrialization is leading the environment of Bohai to be worse. [4]With so many sewage discharged, what is Bohai like now? Can it sustain all this sewage?
2.2 the current situation of Bohai
Because of the high quantity of sewage discharge and the special semi-enclosed geographical location, Bohai now is the most heavy polluted sea area in Chinese marine ecology. The smelly river event happened in Liao River in 1989,the even more sparse shrimp in Hekou sea area, The constant occurrence of the dead fish floating in the river mouth, the area that float oil in the Huangyi sea, and so on, all of these point that the disaster brought by the pollution of Bohai has affected the development of local economy directly and indirectly, since the balance of ecosystem in Bohai has been damaged.
The survey made by College of Environmental Sciences, Beijing University also showed that because endocrine disruptors in water increased, the number of fish in the Bohai has emerged in the phenomenon of hermaphroditism. “This means that these fish has lost the reproductive capacity. In the long-term it will be at risk,” Professor Hu jianying, College of Environmental Sciences, Beijing University said at anxiety. [5]In the three gulf of Bohai, Laizhou Bay, the Bohai Bay, Liaodong Bay, migratory fish spawning grounds has been severely damaged. Originally there are 116 kinds of fish, now less than 60. High quality fish has been replaced by low-quality fish. Population structure tended to be miniaturization, low-quality, and with a younger age. It is understood that, of the 50,000 square kms’ offshore fishing grounds in Shandong Province, in addition to the upper layer of the fish, the large migratory fish species can not form basic fishing season, local waters become "desertification" China. The output of the famous Bohai shrimp and small fish production has diminished from a record high of 40,000 tons and 19,000 tons to the current 1,000 tons and tons of scores.[5]All of these data show that the balance of ecosystem in Bohai has been severally damaged. The damage of ecosystem is a big crash to Bohai, in addition, some other disasters make the possibility of Bohai to be dead even bigger.
Except the damage of marine ecosystem, Bohai now is suffering from some other fatal threat. There are at least 11 cities and areas with varying degrees of seawater intrusion. Dalian seawater intrusion occurred in 12 offshore sections and the total area of invasion is 230km2; because of briny pollution, the content of Cl in the groundwater reach to 300 ~ 1 000 mg / L, a maximum of 7 000 mg / L. The total area of seawater intrusion in Qinhuangdao, in 2004 has reached to 341. 74km2, of which, the area of salt water intrusion in Changli Coastal Plain is 225.42km2, the area of modern seawater intrusion is 116. 32 km2; the content of Cl in the east of Harbor Section monitoring wells has increased from 1 046. [...]
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