Since 1980's, the red tide has remarkable increased in Korea's coastal area due to abnormal increase in phytoplankton caused by the industrialization. With its adverse effect on the marine ecosystem, the red tide has dealt a huge blow to fishing and farming activities. Among the harmful dinoflagellates, red tide by Cochlodinium polykrikoides caused a record high damage of $ 76.4 million on fishery in 1995 and has been appearing every summer offshore of the Korean peninsula. To minimize the damage, it is required to establish red tide data collection and monitoring system.

In the red tide monitoring room, regular monitoring is conducted based on monthly reports on current status by NIFS scientists. On detecting red tides based on data collected from NIFS research teams, local marine affairs administrations or local fishery offices, it promptly issues alerts to fishermen, related organizations and media to help properly respond to the red time issue.

National Institute of Fisheries Science set a goal to minimize red tide damages, improve the monitoring system, evaluate the physiology and ecology of the red tide organisms and prevent the red tide from occurring. It also struggles to find out red tide mechanism and develop the forecasting technology.

NIFS issues the red tide forecast on if a big red tide is possibly caused by harmful organisms with potential to damage on fisheries. On issuing, the red tide gets closely monitored. It is thought that the denser the organisms are, the more serious the damage would be. The scale of damage depends on the types of the red tide organisms.