The Marine National Park Administration opened a branch office in the Dongsha Islands in the South China Sea Tuesday, which will first be tasked with a coral reef health survey. Addressing the opening ceremony of the office, Interior Minister Jiang Yi-huah said the new station will be dedicated to monitoring and assessing changes in the area's coral reefs. 'The opening of the station underscores the government's determination to protect and conserve coral atolls and their natural ecology, ' Jiang said, adding that scientific methods will be introduced to protect and enhance the health and resilience of coral reefs in the region. Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the oceans, thanks to their biodiversity. However, many of them face the threats of overfishing, environmental pollution and global warming. During the opening ceremony, Jiang oversaw the signing of a cooperative agreement between the Marine National Park Administration and National Sun Yat- sen University on joint reef health monitoring and ecological conservation. Under the accord, Jiang said, the Dongsha station will collaborate with the university in establishing a Dongsha oceanic research center to map out management options for coral reef conservation. In the future, he added, the station will also cooperate with other domestic academic institutions to upgrade the center's research equipment. In the long run, the minister said, the station will pool its resources with major international research organizations to set up a South China Sea ecological conservation center that will be dedicated to the study of the regional oceanic environment and biological diversity. Jiang was accompanied by Deputy Interior Minister Lin Tzu-ling and Yeh Shih-wen, director-general of the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior, on the trip to the Dongsha Atoll National Park -- Taiwan's first oceanic national park. The park, located 240 nautical miles southwest of the southern port city of Kaohsiung, covers atolls and surrounding sea areas totaling 3,537 square kilometers. The main part of the park is a circular atoll 25 km in diameter that covers an area of 50,000 hectares. The Ministry of the Interior has been undertaking a survey of the sites and health of the country's coral reefs since 1997 by recruiting volunteer divers and scientists to conduct regular checks of coral reefs along its coastlines and in territorial waters and exclusive economic zones, according to ministry sources. 