The system is the same as meteorological satellite monitoring used for typhoons, and it guarantees that no red tide will be overlooked within China's seas, Qu Tanzhou, director of the State Marine Environmental Monitoring Centre, said yesterday.

When a red tide is detected by satellite, low-flying airplanes and ships will be sent to the area to confirm it, Qu said.

The satellite remote sensing technology was used successfully last year to monitor red tides at three key areas including Bohai, estuaries of Yangtze River, and Pearl River.

A red tide is a dense population of aquatic microscopic organisms that breed in the abundance of salt in surface water. The micro-organisms appear in most of the world's waters and most are harmless. However, some single-cell organisms produce a poison that paralyzes and kills fish. These organisms may also suffocate the fish by consuming nearly all the oxygen in the water.

Specialists say that red tides are mainly caused by pollution from land and the large-scale farming in coastal waters.

Statistics show that the frequency of red tides along China's coastal areas is climbing. From 1993 to 1997, a total of 265 red tides were reported in Chinese waters.

(Xinhua News Agency)