Abstract: The health of marine ecological environment is a key factor restricting the development of marine economy. It is important to scientifically and systematically assess the overall ecological health of coastal marine. Based on the newly constructed “dual-core” assessment framework, which takes the state of marine ecosystem as the inner-core and the human socio-economic index as the outer-core, the health status of Yantai coastal marine environment was comprehensively assessed with the survey data from 2008 to 2016. The results showed that the inner-core elements for Yantai coastal area were mainly rated as “excellent” or “good” level. Generally, the sediment quality was the best, while water environment quality was slightly poor. The status of biological community was the core factor determining final rating. For the outer-core assessment, Yantai coastal areas scored 0.98, based on the output value of marine industrial and area of marine reserves. The final “dual-core” assessment result for Yantai offshore area was “excellent/good + 0.98”, which indicated that the healthy status of ecological environment of Yantai offshore area was still good, in spite of high degree of development and utilization, but some areas had begun to deteriorate, which needed to be paid special attention in the further developing of marine industry. Our results following the “dual core” framework could provide guidance for the management and decision-making related marine resources development and environmental protection, and is of great significance to realize sustainable utilization of marine resources and environment.

Key words: assessment of marine environmental health, the “dual-core” framework, Yantai offshore.