isms and the monitoring items on time-space scale does not agreed with environmental assessment procedure under the law.
In this paper, we describe the methods and the subjects to estimate a impact by developmental actions on marine organisms in the field.
2. Environmental impacts assessment and history in Japan
2-1.History of environmental problems in Japan
In Japan. coastal environmental research with the buildup of pollution begun in the 1960s. Construction of new organizations for environmental assessments were made up by Environmental Protection Agency (Environmental Protection Research) and sections in governmental and local self-governing institutions during that period. The Minamata disease was seen as the most serious disease in 1950s due to industrial wastewater.
Since 1970. the Japanese government has made an effort to preserve water quality in the coastal waters and has issued several laws (Table 1). After this period, several scientific societies in Japan have made up committees for marine environmental problems. such as the Oceanographic Soc., Fisheries Soc., Ecological Soc. and others and started environmental impact studies.
2-2. Anthropogenic impacts
In Japan. sources of environmental problems in the coastal waters were gradually changed from the pollution as industrial wastewater, oil spills. heavy metals and others related to the health and toxic substances in 1960s towards avoiding the deleterious effects on humans, animals, environmental functions both now and in future. The policy and the approach are applied to a "sustainable development". The concept of coastal environmental management is using popular words such as mitigation, remedation, and others for the developers. Nowadays, developers plan in every case are making efforts to minimize the changes in the coastal environment under the law.
3. Evaluation methods for environmental effects
We found several ways of evaluating nature at the present time;
*Functions of ecosystem
1. Ethics --- global environment, preserve organisms, landscape, history, culture,
2. Esthetics --- stability of nature,
*Function of economy
3. Economy --- fisheries, harbors, reclamation,
In Japan, an evaluation procedure of the environmental effects has been continued since 1970s as shown in Fig. 1. This procedure has no reconsideration process about the developers' plan. Under this situation, evaluation methods are based on scientific knowledge of many environmental parameters such as physical, chemical, biological, etc. and are used by the numerical simulation models or a mathematical expression on the basis of the developer's data, in general. Judgments of the environmental effects must be performed by opinions of specialists which is constructed in governmental committees and so on. We point out the some problems included in the procedure and the evaluation methods using a numerical model every time (Oceanogr. Soc., 1994).
The most important method for the evaluation of the environmental effects is to describe and analyze the relationships between scientific knowledge of many environmental parameters and marine organisms. It can be very difficult to express the qualitative and quantitative estimation for the evaluation of the environmental effects using several of the above methods. Because biological monitoring measures for assessments such as plankton and benthic animals are con-
