TIANJIN — The Dongjiang Coastal Park in Tianjin municipality has seen a big increase in the number of visitors.

Among them were Zhang Shu and her daughter, who spent the day collecting tiny crabs and clams in a small pink bucket.

"Here, we not only enjoy a beautiful coastal view but also can collect sea shells and crabs," said Zhang, who is from Tangshan city in neighboring Hebei province.

Things were very different in the past.

Located in Bohai Bay, where the Haihe River flows into the sea, Tianjin has a coastline of around 100 kilometers but no natural beaches, and the coastal ecosystem was once fragile as a result of the area's geography and problems with pollution.

In 2019, the city began an ecological restoration program called "Blue Bay".

As part of the program, the city's urban management commission worked to clean up domestic coastal waste and solid industrial waste, the municipal commission of agriculture and rural affairs moved to tackle pollution resulting from mariculture and fishing, and the water authority acted to improve the state of the rivers flowing into the sea.

The Dongjiang Coastal Park itself is part of the program.

With its 1.8-km coastline and covering an area of 200,000 square meters, the park has become a sightseeing hot spot, according to Lu Huibing, deputy chief of the Land Planning and Construction Bureau at the Dongjiang Free Trade Port Zone in Tianjin.

Nowadays, visitors can play on the beach, enjoy the sunrise and go bird-watching in the park, which received 571,000 visitors during the May Day holiday.

Zhang Xiaodan, an ecology and environment official with the DFTP, said the zone has set up an intelligent monitoring system for marine garbage that monitors environmental conditions by drone.

The intelligent photo transmission and AI recognition systems help figure out the types and density of garbage near the coast, as well as appropriate methods for its disposal, she said.

By the end of last year, the density of garbage on beaches and floating on the sea surface in DFTP had dropped by 86 percent.

On June 5, World Environment Day, the park organized a series of activities, including a low-carbon life quiz and an interactive event themed on garbage sorting.

"We hope that this way, tourists go home with awareness of protecting the environment while having fun," Zhang said.

Xinhua