• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.1185-1192
• /
• 2014

Health assessment of aquatic ecosystem was investigated by using LEHA (Lentic Ecosystem Health Assessment) model method with habitat fish population structure analysis in this study. The investigation was two comparison spots (St 1; floating island, St 2; 500 m away site from st 1) in the Habcheon lake of Korea. As results, health evaluation of Habcheon lake ecosystem was fair grade of LEHA scores base on metric values in both place (30 score in st. 1 and 32 score in st. 2).

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.327-337
• /
• 2007

Plankton communities have close relationships with environmental changes in water columns. Thus, the use of plankton as a biological tool for assessing the marine ecosystem health may be effective. Major issue regarding coastal pollution has been usually recognized as phytoplankton blooms or red tides caused by the eutrophication, an increase in concentration of inorganic nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. However, in order to understand the effects of the overall pollution on marine ecosystem, the organic pollutants as well as the inorganic nutrients should be also considered. For understanding the effects of the organic pollution, among the planktonic organisms, heterotrophic bacteria, heterotrophic flagellates and ciliates should be investigated. Generally, there are three approaches for assessing the marine ecosystem health using the plankton taxa or plankton communities. The first one is a community-based approach such as diversity index and chlorophyll a concentration which are common in analysis of the plankton communities. The second is an indiviual-based approach which is to monitor the pollution indicative species. This approach needs one's ability to identify the plankton to species level. The last approach is a bioassay of toxicity, which can be applied to the plankton. A pilot study in Masan Bay was conducted to assess the effects of the inorganic and organic pollution. In this article, a new approach using plankton communities was tentatively presented as a biological tool for assessing the ecosystem health of Masan Bay.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.125-132
• /
• 2010

In order to assess the effect of pollution on marine ecosystem, we examined the plankton health assessment at 16 stations during summer season in Jinhae Bay. The organic and inorganic pollutant sources (dissolved organic carbon; DOC, chemical oxygen demand; COD and Chlorophyll a; Chl.a), including planktonic orangism such as enterobacteria Escherichia coli, heterotrophic bacteria (HB), autotrophic nano-flagellates (ANF), heterotrophic nano flagellates (HNF), ciliate and harmful algal bloom species (HABs) were used to characterize marine ecosystem health assessment. Of these, we tentatively selected those items Chl.a, HABs, HB and E. coli for plankton health index (PHI). Also, the scoring criteria for each metric were based on a statistical analysis and then, the grades are rated on four levels. As a result, the ecological assessment of these data reveals that PHI in Jinhae Bay is rated as "Good or fair" for overall conditions. The present study suggests that the PHI might be considered as one of important management tool to assess marine ecosystem health of Jinhae Bay.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.319-326
• /
• 2007

Coastal marine ecosystems continue to suffer unrelenting pressures from human population growth, increased development, and climate change. Moreover, these systems' capacity for self-repair is declining with such increases in anthropogenic production of various pollutants. What is the present health status or condition of the coastal ecosystem? If our coastal areas are unhealthy, which conditions are considered serious? To answer such questions, the United States, Canada, and Australia are currently assessing coastal ecosystem health using systematic monitoring programs as well as identifying and implementing management plans to improve the health of degraded coastal ecosystems. To evaluate marine environments, Korea is currently using a limited number of factors to estimate water quality. In fact, we are ill-prepared for assessing coastal ecosystem health because no biologically specific criteria are in place to measure the responses to various pollutants. We should select ecosystem-specific indicators from physicochemical stressors and evaluate the subsequent biological responses within each ecosystem. Furthermore, a set of practical indicators should be generated by considering the characteristics and uses of a local coastal area and the key issues at hand. The values of indicators should be presented as indices that allow understanding by the general public as well as by practitioners, policy makers, environmental managers and other stakeholders.

• Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.10-17
• /
• 2016

A wide-spread contamination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as dioxins, PCBs, PBDEs in the aquatic ecosystem has generated a great concern over the potential risk for these substances to impact marine biotas and food web. Since a major exposure route of these substances to the humans is through the consumption of food including fish and marine byproducts, the consumption of contaminated products has been a great public health concern. Exposure to POPs has been associated with a wide spectrum of adverse effects including reproductive, developmental, immunologic, carcinogenic, and neurotoxic effects. This review covers the background information of key POPs substances and the recent development of toxicity studies including the mode of action. Because neurotoxic effects of some POPs have been observed in humans at low concentrations, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), a representative chemical of POPs, is focused to discuss the possible mode(s) of action for the neurotoxic effects. This review provides the updates of toxicity studies on POPs and paves ways to discuss a possible implication of contaminated marine biota over the human health among the marine biotechnology researchers.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
• /
• v.54 no.2
• /
• pp.194-207
• /
• 2021

It is necessary to assess and manage the different elements of the marine ecosystem, such as climate change, habitat, primary and secondary production, energy flow, food web, potential yield, and fishing, to maintain the health of the ecosystem as well as support sustainable development of fishery. We set up an ecosystem model around the Korean peninsula to produce scientific predictions necessary for the assessment and management of marine ecosystems and presented the usability of the model with scenario experiments. We used the Atlantis ecosystem model based on the marine food web; Atlantis is a three-dimensional end-to-end model that includes the information and processes within an entire system, from an abiotic environment to human activity. We input the ecological and biological parameters, such as growth, mortality, spawning, recruitment, and migration, to the Atlantis model via functional groups using existing research and local measurements. During the simulation period (2018-2019), we confirmed that the model reproduced the observed data reasonably and reflected the actual ecosystem characteristics appropriately. We thus identified the usability of a marine ecosystem model with experiments on different environmental change scenarios.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.109-117
• /
• 2008

Application of biomarkers for assessing marine environmental health risk is a relatively new field. According to the National Research Council and the World Health Organization, biomarkers can be divided into three classes: biomarkers of exposure, biomarkers of effect, and biomarkers of susceptibility. In order to assess exposure to or effect of the environmental pollutants on marine ecosystem, the following set of biomarkers can be examined: detoxification, oxidative stress, biotransformation products, stress responses, apoptosis, physiological metabolisms, neuromuscular responses, reproductions, steroid hormones, antioxidants, genetic modifications. Since early 1990s, several biomarker research groups have developed health indices of marine organisms to be used for assessing the state of the marine environment. Biomarker indices can be used to interpret data obtained from monitoring biological effects. In this review, we will summarize Health assessment Index, Biomarker Index, Bioeffect Assessment Index and Generalized Linear Model. Measurements of biomarker responses and development of biomarker index in marine organisms from contaminated sites offer great a lot of information, which can be used in environmental monitoring programs, designed for various aspects of ecosystem risk assessment.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.121-136
• /
• 2022

Purpose : Marine therapy is an activity that promotes public health such as constitution improvement, immunity improvement, and anti-aging by utilizing marine therapeutic resources such as seawater, mud, seaweed, salt and sea climate. In Europe developed countries, the marine therapy industry has been developing for centuries, with France, Germany, and Israel leading the way. Currently, it has achieved great industrial achievements and is of great help in improving the human health. The purpose of this study is to investigate how marine therapeutic resources benefit to human health, as well as how to study and utilize their efficacy. We analyzed previous research articles related to the effects of marine therapeutic resources. Methods : The study included a total of 830 published literatures in the last 20 years from the Republic of Korea and other contries. PubMed and Google Scholar were utilized to collect the foreign source while the local scientific publications were accessed through the Korean Education and research Information Service (KERIS) and Korean studies Information Service System (KISS). The keywords used to search foreign literature were "marine therapy", "Thalassotherapy", "seawater", "deep seawater", "saline groundwater", "sand therapy", "mud therapy", "hydrotherapy", "seaweed", "Sun light", "sea salt", "marine animal", and "marine microorganisms" were combined, and for the domestic literature, the keywords were "marine therapy", "marine therapeutic resources", "seawater", and "sand". Results : A total of 830 research papers were found as a result of searching for domestic and international papers related to marine therapeutic resources. The collected documents were classified into 175 seawater resources, 259 marine mineral resources, 41 marine environment, and 355 marine organisms. The efficacy of each marine therapeutic resources was analyzed. By resources type, there were about 213 papers on the efficacy of seaweed, followed by about 175 papers on seawater, 142 on microorganisms, 124 on mud/peat, and sand, salt, minerals and others are appeared in order (Table 1). Conclusion : Korea has the highest marine biodiversity index, excellent tidal flats, four distinct seasons, and various sea environments of the East sea, Yellow sea, South sea and Jeju sea. For this reason, Korea has a much more diverse marine therapeutic resources than other advanced countries in the marine therapy industry. prebiously, we thought that the sea was only valuable as a shipping port and fishery industry. But now, it been shown that the ocean can become a new industrial field which can contribute to human health and well-being by providing healing and therapy to people through the gift of marine resources.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.275-290
• /
• 2014

The marine ecosystem represents a vast and dynamic array of bio-resources attributed with its huge diversity and considered as potential untapped reservoirs for the development of functional foods for future health markets. Basically, marine microorganisms, sponges, algae, invertebrates such as crustaceans and mollusks along with marine fish species can be considered as marine bio-resources, which can be utilized to obtain different health benefits for humans, directly or after processing. Most of the bio-molecular components, such as lipids and proteins from these marine bio-resources, which can be extracted in large scale using the modern and advanced biotechnological approaches, are suitable drug candidates for the pharmaceutical industry as well as functional food ingredients for the food industry. Moreover, the furtherance of high throughput molecular biological techniques has already been incorporated with identification, mining and extraction of molecular components from marine bio-resources. In this review, potential marine bio-resources with respect to their extractable bio-molecules were described in details, while explaining the present and prospective methods of identification and extraction, which are integrated with advanced techniques in modern biotechnology. In addition, this provides an overview of future trends in marine biotechnology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.34-44
• /
• 2019

Marine activities are becoming more diverse and extensive due to recent social developments, exceeding the environmental capacity of the marine ecosystem. The resilience, resistance, and constancy of marine ecosystems are being damaged or degraded. This prevents the ecosystem from functioning properly, leading to a decline in ecosystem services and value. As a means of returning the damaged ecosystem to health, more and more people are interested in restoration. At a time when restoration projects are gradually expanding, various problems that may arise when implementing the Sea Area Utilization Consultation and Impact Assessment for restoration projects need to be checked, in addition to confirming the direction to be pursued. Therefore, in this study terms related to restoration from research papers and reports were summarized, and the status of the Sea Area Utilization Consultation related to restoration projects and the status of the restoration project were reviewed. In addition, problems with Sea Area Utilization Consultations were considered through a case study to ensure the successful execution of restoration projects. Based on this, we intend to present improvement measures for Sea Area Utilization Consultations and Impact Assessments for restoration projects. This will provide effective information for future policies and plans.