. EAST ASIAN SEAS Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei LARGE MARINE ECOSYSTEMS The East Asian Seas region covers the eastern portion of the Bay of Bengal LME and the entirety of another four LMEs: South China Sea, Sulu-Celebes Sea, Indonesian Seas and the Northern Australian Shelf. The region is geomorphologically highly diverse; it includes shallow shelf zones, deep trenches, straits and channels separating many large and innumerable small islands, all carried on a complex pattern of tectonic plates. To the east of
. EAST ASIAN SEAS Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei LARGE MARINE ECOSYSTEMS The East Asian Seas region covers the eastern portion of the Bay of Bengal LME and the entirety of another four LMEs: South China Sea, Sulu-Celebes Sea, Indonesian Seas and the Northern Australian Shelf. The region is geomorphologically highly diverse; it includes shallow shelf zones, deep trenches, straits and channels separating many large and innumerable small islands, all carried on a complex pattern of tectonic plates. To the east of the region, at around the latitude of Luzon, the west-flowing North Equatorial Current divides into the Kuroshio Current, flowing north, and the Mindanao Current, flowing south. There is evidence that many rivers in the region are carrying an increasing load of terrigenous sediments into coastal waters, which are also heavily impacted by pollution from coastal industries and human settlements. South China Sea This LME extends over some million km2, from the mainland coast of Asia, where it is divided into subsystems (eg. the Gulf of Thailand and the Gulf of Tonkin), to the western margins of the Philippines and the island of Borneo. Productivity tends to be high in coastal areas and low at depth. Coastal fishery resources have been heavily impacted by overfishing and pollution. Sulu-Celebes Seas This is a semi-enclosed LME, extending over 900,000 km2 between Palawan (Philippines) in the north and Sulawesi in the south. Much of the region has a depth greater than 3,000 m. The offshore waters are little exploited and fishing is mainly limited to coastal areas; coastal trawling for prawn is a major export base and artisanal fishing takes finfish for local consumption. Indonesian Seas Centred on the Banda Sea, and including the Arafura Sea, this moderate-size (400,000 km2) tropical LME lies entirely within Indonesian territory. The sea and its productivity are much influenced
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Photo credit: © The Bookworm Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bhlconsortium, bookcentury1900, bookcollectionbiodiversity, bookl
