The Pearl River mouth system is globally one of the key areas to study the land-ocean interaction mirroring natural and man made driving forces. Understanding the chain linking the river’s drainage area with the receiving basins via riverine and marine particle flux may serves as a blueprint for other river dominated shelf seas not only on Asian continental margins. The complexity of the processes at the transit zone between the continent and the ocean requires interdisciplinary research teams for the investigation of the river mouth system and adjacent areas including geologists, oceanographers, biologists and geochemists.