Introduction:

　　The Jiaozhou Bay lies between 35°38¢ - 36°18¢ N and 120°04¢ - 120°23¢ E, covering an area of 390 km2. As a semi-closed fan-shaped sea bay, it is surrounded by the Qingdao city, and connects the Yellow Sea with a narrow channel in the south. Its average depth is 6-7 m, with most part of the bay is no deeper than 5 m. Population density around the Jiaozhou Bay is high. Farms, factories, highways, ports, tourism etc. can all affect the environments of the bay.

　　The Jiaozhou Bay lies in warm temperate monsoon climate area, with annual average air temperature of 12.3°C, average total solar radiation of 480-518 KJ/cm2/a, and rainfall of 725-1100 mm per year. It shares similar environmental and biota characters with coastal areas of the Yellow and Bohai Seas. Biological productivity and diversity was high in this area: about 175 phytoplankton species have been identified and annual primary production is 503 mgC/m2/d; 110 zooplankton species have been identified and average biomass is 100mg/m2.

　　The Jiaozhou Bay Station was founded in 1981 in the name of ‘The Huangdao Island Mariculture Proving Ground’, which was changed into ‘The Huang Island Mariculture & Biotechnology Experimental Station’ in 1986. In 1991, it was accepted as one of the 29 field observation stations of China Ecosystem Research Network (CERN), in which it was called ‘The Jiaozhou Bay Marine Ecosystem Research Station (JBMERS)’. It is the only observation and research station in temperate China Seas. In 2005, it was authorized membership of State Ecosystem Observation and Research Network, in the name of ‘State Observation & Research Station of Jiaozhou Bay Marine Ecosystem, Shandong’.

　　At the beginning, the Jiaozhou Bay Station mainly engaged in mariculture. All the three pivotal events in the Chinese mariculture history, aquaculture of seaweed, shrimp and shellfish, have originated from the Jiaozhou Bay. From 1990s, when environmental problems in the Jiaozhou Bay were getting serious, the Jiaozhou Bay Station turned to long-term observation of environments and ecosystem, especially eutrophication. Since 21st century, the Jiaozhou Bay Station and the scientists were trying to find out how the marine ecosystem was affected by global change and human activities and how it feedback, and to establish methods and techniques for sustainable developments.

　　

Tasks

　　The Jiaozhou Bay station have acted as a base of research and observation in a typical temperate area of China, as a proving ground of modern mariculture techniques, as a education organization of research and aquaculture experts, as a open academic communication platform for both domestic and international scientists, and as an exhibition of scientific results on Chinese marine ecosystems.

　　In the future, we would like the Jiaozhou Bay Station to be an excellent platform for observation, research and mariculture in marine ecosystems, providing scientific data for long-term study on marine ecology and global change, and the Jiaozhou Bay to be a typical mode for future marine ecological researches in neritic areas.

• 　  To perform long-term observation and research: on dynamics of bay ecosystem and environment at fixed set of stations through real-time multi-disciplinary investigation.
• 　  To study the common issues in front of different bays of the world: connecting the observed results of ecological change with all kinds of natural and human disturbances.
• 　To explore new technology and mode and popularize them for general use in mariculture:

　　

Team

　　Dr. SUN Song is the director of JBMERS, and also committee member of 4 different international scientific workgroup on marine ecology. Composed of 8 members, with three of them holding Ph.D degrees, his group works on marine ecosystem dynamics. Their innovative achievements on zooplankton population dynamics and biological-physical coupling was recently introduced in detail in the GLOBEC and IGBP newsletters, as two leading results of China GLOBEC research.