ABSTRACT
Zhanjiang Bay, a semi-closed and liman bay, is located in the southwest of Guangdong province and northeast of the Leizhou Peninsula. It is a bay with medium tidal range, irregular semidiurnal tide, about 2 m tidal range on average at the bay mouth, nearly about 5 × 108 m3 of total tidal volume which can up to 10 × 108 m3, and its tidal current velocity is 0.5 to 1.5 m/s. Its dentritic tideways stretch into inland more than 50 km from south to north. At the top of the bay, Suixi river flows in, with annual runoff about 10.4 × 108 m3, which is negligible compared with the tidal prism (Xia et al. 2007). There are four islands in the bay, named Nansan island, Techeng island, Dongtoushan island and Donghai island respectively. The bay mouth, between Nansan island and Donghai island with a width about 2 km, is the main channel to open seas (Li et al. 2011). The Zhanjiang harbor in the bay is the second largest port of Guangdong province, covers a sea area of 1460 km2, and is the largest tideway of South China (Chen et al. 2004).
