Abstract: In recent decades, China’s coastal ecological environment has undergone significant changes under multiple pressures such as climate change and high intensity of human activities. The occurrence and scale of harmful algal blooms represented by the red tide and the green tide are increasing rapidly. Moreover, environmental problems such as hypoxia and acidification in seawater have become increasingly prominent. It is urgent to find out the occurrence mechanism and prevention measures of marine eco-environmental disasters. Therefore, we explained the connotation of the concept of “marine eco-environmental disaster” for the first time, and systematically interpreted the biogenic element driving mechanisms in the occurrence of eco-environmental disasters in China nearshore area in the aspects of exogenous input of nutrients, the mineralization and decomposition of marine organic matters and nutrient regeneration, as well as the abnormal nutrient structure in offshore waters. We pointed out that the drastic increases of terrigenous nutrient discharge caused by enhancing human activities, together with the complex biogeochemical cycle process after biogenic elements entering the sea, led to the frequent occurrence of coastal eco-environmental disasters. On this basis, combined with the latest research progress in this field, we put forward the regulatory schemes for coastal ecological environment health based on the controlling of seawater biogenic element. That is, based on land-sea integration strategy, the reduction of land-source pollutants, especially inorganic nitrogen from land, coastal zone and into the sea, and the normalization of nutrient structure in coastal seawater through artificial regulation technology, are the key points to reduce and control the occurrence of disasters and improve the quality of the coastal ecosystems.

Key words: marine eco-environmental disaster, nutrient regulation, land and sea coordination, ecological environment health, China’s off-shore waters