From AFP:
Polluted, crossed by busy shipping lanes, and disputed by many countries, the South China Sea has taken an environmental battering that threatens future food supplies, marine scientists have warned.
In a decade the sea — at the heart of a densely populated and rapidly industrialising region — has lost 16 percent of its coral reefs and coastal mangroves and 30 percent of its sea grass, says the United Nations.
The exploitation of its fisheries, both legal and illegal, by family boats and industrial deep sea trawlers now threatens to deplete fish stocks that millions of people rely on, a Hanoi conference heard last week.
