Water Quality of the Yellow Sea in Summer

The distributions of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chemical oxygen demand, dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphate in the Yellow Sea are described from data collected in June and July, 1994. Based on the observations of water temperature and salinity, the fresh waters originated from the Changjiang River were found to affect the waters adjacent to Cheju Island. In the light of the distributions of dissolved oxygen and chemical oxygen demand, the western part of the Yellow Sea was worse in water quality than the eastern part. Based on data of nutrients, eutrophication indices of the western part were higher than those of the eastern part in summer. It is concluded that the western part of the Yellow Sea appeared to receive high pollution loads from rivers and was evaluated to have high potentiality of red tide occurrence.