Building Beautiful Bays and Developing Hundred-Mile Blue Bay: Lianyungang Adopts Effective “Strategies” for Marine Ecological Development

From: Lianyungang Daily Updated: 2025-03-15 09:46

On a sunny spring day, Sumawan in the "Lian Island-Port Area", a national-level beautiful bay, shines with bright sunlight. The mountains are gradually turning green, and the golden sandy beaches attract tourists from all over to visit. Sumawan is an important part of Lianyungang's efforts to build a modern marine city with distinctive mountain-sea features.

Close attention must be paid to the protection of marine ecology for the development of the marine economy. High-level marine ecological environmental protection can create new momentum and advantages for the high-quality development of the marine economy, providing strong support for an ecology-first, green, and low-carbon marine economy. In recent years, Lianyungang has adhered to the principle of unifying marine industry development with marine resource and environmental protection, pursuing development while protecting and protection while developing. Through scientific zoning and management, the city guides various development, protection, and construction activities in coastal waters, enhances ecosystem services, promotes efficient utilization of marine resources, accelerates the construction of a modern marine industry system, and drives the formation of a circular, low-carbon, intensive, and efficient marine development pattern.

Efforts have been made to strengthen offshore comprehensive governance. In 2024, Lianyungang released a total nitrogen treatment and control plan with "one river, one strategy" for 12 rivers flowing into the sea, comprehensively completed the first round of cleanup and rectification of 398 sewage outlets discharging into the sea, achieved a 100% excellent or good water quality rate for the 12 rivers, and reduced the total nitrogen concentration by 19.3% compared to 2020. The average proportion of excellent or good seawater quality in coastal waters in spring and summer was 97.4%, 17.5 percentage points higher than the provincial annual assessment target, representing a historic high and the best among the three coastal cities. Three water quality automatic stations and two online monitoring systems for tailwater from large-scale mariculture have been constructed.

Marine ecological restoration has been well implemented. Lianyungang has compiled the first overall planning for marine nature reserves in Jiangsu Province, the Overall Planning for Haizhou Bay National Marine Nature Park (2023-2033). More than 20 aquatic organism restocking activities have been carried out, with over 1.4 billion units of Chinese shrimp, swimming crab, black seabream, and black rockfish released. The ecological protection and restoration projects in coastal waters such as the Haizhou Bay fishing ground have been completed. The annual tasks for wetland ecological restoration in Liezikou and the construction of ecological artificial reefs have been fulfilled, and the construction of low-carbon and ecological beautiful islands has been initiated on the Qiansan Islands.

Efforts have been made to promote the construction of beautiful bays. A new round of "Love Beach" adoption has been launched, with more than 30 public welfare beach cleaning volunteer service teams formed. There have been 51 beach cleaning and floating debris removal actions, with over 1,070 tons of beach waste collected. The "Lian Island-Port Area" has been awarded the title of a national-level beautiful bay, and the "Ecological Integration of Agriculture, Culture, and Tourism" at the Yuntai Mountain by the Sea has been selected as a typical case of realizing the value of ecological products in the field of natural resources in Jiangsu Province.

According to the relevant responsible person from the Municipal Development and Reform Commission, this year, Lianyungang will implement marine ecological protection and restoration projects, strengthen the ecological environment and comprehensive governance of offshore and coastal waters, accelerate the construction of beautiful bays, and establish a good base for the Jiangsu Provincial Marine and Fisheries Safety Dispatch and Command Center in Lianyungang. The supervision of marine projects will be strengthened, a trading service platform for sea area use rights will be established, the market-oriented allocation of sea areas for aquaculture will be promoted, and the legal and rational utilization of sea area resources will be guaranteed. Efforts will be made to steadily carry out the three-dimensional and stratified authorization of sea areas and promote the new model of "multi-purpose use of the sea."