Ambitious land reclamation projects from tidal-flats along China's coastal provinces are posing grave threats to the fertile shallows that serve as both a self-cleaning mechanism for the ocean and habitat for marine life, China National Radio reports.

A typical example is Cixi in Ningbo city, in Jiangsu Province, which boasts more than 43,000 hectares (106,210 acres) of tidal-flats. However 19,300 hectares (47,671 acres) of that wetland will be filled up by the end of the year to form hard land for industrial projects. And during the next decade more than 14,700 hectares (36,309 acres) will also be reclaimed.

Land reclamation will reduce Cixi's tidal flats to one sixth of its current size in ten years time, according to Chen Liming, a vice director of the city's water conservancy bureau.

Exemplifying this development, highly polluting factories of electroplating and dyeing were set up on the reclaimed land, discharging industrial waste water into the ocean and destroying the local fishermen's livelihood.

Wu Xiongfei, with the Ningbo Ocean and fishery research institute was quoted in the report as saying that tidal flats in the entire Ningbo area could be wiped out by two thirds in five years, causing irreversible damage to the marine environment.