Estuaries Of China's Yellow, Yangtze Rivers Declared Dead Zones - AFP

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The estuaries of China's two greatest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, have been declared dead zones by the United Nations due to high amounts of pollutants, state press said Friday. "Experts warn that these areas are fast becoming major threats to fish stocks and to people who depend upon fisheries for food and livelihoods," the China Daily reported, citing a recent study by the UN Environmental Program.

Dead zones are areas in oceans and lakes choked of oxygen by algae blooms that feed off high concentrations of pollutants such as raw sewage and fertilizer, the report said. The algae blooms sap the water of its oxygen, which in turn endangers marine life, it added.

According to a separate report by China's State Environmental Protection Administration, the nation's coastal regions suffered from 82 "red tides", a form of algae bloom, in 2005, the paper said. Large-scale red tides have become an annual occurrence in waters off eastern China's Zhejiang province, where the Yangtze River flows into the sea, and farther north in the Bohai Sea near the Yellow River estuary, the paper added.

Last year, land-based activities in China led to the dumping of 500,000 tons of ammonia-nitrogen and 30,000 tons of phosphate into the sea, it said. The two chemicals are key ingredients in fertilizer. In June this year, a red tide that spread out in a 1,000-square-kilometre (620-square-mile) area in the Yangtze River estuary killed more than 12 million fish.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2006/061020082452.y883x1uf.html