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Domestic sewage and industrial wastes, dissolved or suspended in water, are conveniently disposed of by running them, either untreated or after partial treatment, directly into coastal embayments and estuaries or into open coastal waters. Because of the increase in population density, causing a shift from individual septic systems to local collection networks and centralized treatment plants, the use of the marine environment as a dump for liquid waste is increasing at an even faster rate than that of the population growth of the coastal regions. The sea has seemed a natural dumping ground for waste materials, but we now know that this is not acceptable practice in many cases. Some of the kinds of wastes man has disposed of in the sea or might consider disposing of include domestic sewage, industrial wastes, radioactive wastes, heat, agricultural drainage, brines from saline water conversion or chemical recovery plants, and insoluble junk. However, a first principle is that if such wastes are mixed with sufficiently large quantities of seawater, their undesirable qualities will be diluted to unobjectionably low levels. The problem then reduces to one of dilution and that of possible reconcentration to objectionable or dangerous levels, generally by biological agencies. Thus this article is mainly oriented toward three basic issues types and forms of pollutants that coastal waters receive assessment of receiving waters effect of pollutants on coastal habitat. Keywords: coastal water pollutants; types and forms of water pollution; nutrient pollution in coastal waters; oil pollution input to the marine environment; marine sediment cores; contaminated chernaya Bay; assessment of receiving waters; effects of pollutants on marine habitat; biological effects of oil; oil effects on fish and mariculture; overfishing; sources and effects of marine pollution