A visiting Chinese official suggested on Monday that the two sides across the Taiwan Strait expand exchanges of information on marine pollution incidents and contingency monitoring and warning techniques. Zhang Huirong, head of the East China Seas Branch under China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA) , brought up the proposal at a two-day cross-strait marine forum in Taipei City, organized by the Taiwan Green Productivity Foundation at the behest of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). On the opening day of the forum Monday, Zhang said China's coasts have faced a serious threat in recent years from toxic 'red tides, ' which result from harmful algal blooms that are poisonous to marine life and humans. There were 86 occurrences of red tides on the East China Sea between 2000 and 2008, covering up to as much as 71 percent of the sea in a single year, Zhang said. In addition to red tides, another form of pollution called green tides caused economic damage to the East China Sea region that reached 30 million yuan (NT$140 million) in 2008, he said. Zhang also noted that oil leaks from nuclear power plants and crude oil refineries into waters along China's coast had increased from 1.94 million tons in 1949 to 580 million tons in 2008. He underlined the need to establish a warning system targeting the pollution so that related authorities could take swift and effective measures to stop the pollution from spreading. Zhang suggested the two sides establish a cross-strait oil-spill disaster control mechanism. At the opening of the forum, EPA Deputy Minister Chiu Wen-yen underlined the impact of climate change on the marine environment and said that because the impact could be felt across borders, it was only natural and necessary for the two sides to cooperate on the issue through stepped up oceanic climate research. 