Abstract
China's seas cover nearly 5 million square kilometers extending from the tropical to the temperate climate zones and bordering on 32,000 km of coastline, including islands. Comprehensive systematic study of the marine biodiversity within this region began in the early 1950s with the establishment of the Qingdao Marine Biological Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since that time scientists have carried out intensive multidisciplinary research on marine life in the China seas and have recorded 22,629 species belonging to 46 phyla. The marine flora and fauna of the China seas are characterized by high biodiversity, including tropical and subtropical elements of the Indo-West Pacific warm-water fauna in the South and East China seas, and temperate elements of North Pacific temperate fauna mainly in the Yellow Sea. The southern South China Sea fauna is characterized by typical tropical elements paralleled with the Philippine-New Guinea-Indonesia Coral triangle typical tropical faunal center.This paper summarizes advances in studies of marine biodiversity in China's seas and discusses current research mainly on characteristics and changes in marine biodiversity, including the monitoring, assessment, and conservation of endangered species and particularly the strengthening of effective management. Studies of (1) a tidal flat in a semi-enclosed embayment, (2) the impact of global climate change on a cold-water ecosystem, (3) coral reefs of Hainan Island and Xisha-Nansha atolls, (4) mangrove forests of the South China Sea, (5) a threatened seagrass field, and (6) an example of stock enhancement practices of the Chinese shrimp fishery are briefly introduced. Besides the overexploitation of living resources (more than 12.4 million tons yielded in 2007), the major threat to the biodiversity of the China seas is environmental deterioration (pollution, coastal construction), particularly in the brackish waters of estuarine environments, which are characterized by high productivity and represent spawning and nursery areas for several economically important species. In the long term, climate change is also a major threat. Finally, challenges in marine biodiversity studies are briefly discussed along with suggestions to strengthen the field. Since 2004, China has participated in the Census of Marine Life, through which advances in the study of zooplankton and zoobenthos biodiversity were finally summarized.
Highlights
China occupies the eastern part of the Eurasian continent adjacent to the western Pacific Ocean, including its marginal seas—the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea
The tropical Indo-Malaysian biotic elements that are transported by these warm currents originated in the south, while the cold-water species came from the north and dominate deeper parts of the Yellow Sea Cold Water Mass under the thermocline at the 15–30 m layer in summer
The China seas are characterized by high biodiversity (Table 2), including rich tropical and subtropical elements in the East and South China seas and temperate biota in the Yellow and Bohai seas
Summary
China occupies the eastern part of the Eurasian continent adjacent to the western Pacific Ocean, including its marginal seas—the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. The Chinese coastline of 32,000 km includes the coastlines of 6,500 islands. The coastline of mainland China runs 18,000 km from the mouth of the Yalu River on the China-Korea border in the north, to the mouth of the Beilun River on the China-Vietnam border in the south. The coastline features are affected by monsoon winds and Pacific tidal waves and currents and by several large rivers, including the Huanghe (Yellow River), Changjiang (Yangtze River), and Zhujiang (Pearl River). A corresponding variety of coastal ecosystems includes the vast area of flat coasts with either sandy beaches and barriers or wide tidal flats in northern China, indented coasts in the mountainous and hilly areas mainly in southern China, deltas and estuaries, coral reefs and mangroves, as well as seagrass fields and algal beds
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