Key Threats
The Yellow Sea Ecoregion is also one of the world’s most heavily disturbed/exploited marine ecoregions. Major threats include:
- Loss of habitats: Loss of coastal wetlands in the past century is more than 40%.
- Overfishing: Decrease of most traditional target species (demersal fish) of high commercial value by more than 40% in weight of catches despite the continuous increase of fishing efforts. Replacement of larger, commercially important species by smaller or less valuable ones with high turnover rates.
- Pollution: A vast population of 600 million (10％ of the world’s total) living in the watersheds draining into the Yellow Sea Ecoregion. Inadequate wastewater treatment in all the continental countries surrounding this Ecoregion
