Both long period of summer drought and unusual high water temperature in 1988 caused the harmfull effect to the aquacultural organisms in south coast of Korea. One of those was the mass mortality of arkshell seedlings in Jinhae Bay. The purpose of this study was to verify the effects of environmental factors on arkshell seedlings by investigating not only water quality and food organisms in culturing grounds, but also meteorological conditions. Water temperature in November was higher at $2.0^{circ}C$ than mean water temperature and the concentration of total inorganic nitrogen and N/P ratio were $0.38{mu}g-at/l,$ 0.98, respectively which indicated the exhaustion of nutrients, especially nitrogen in the study area. In analysis of phytoplankton population structure, species diversity index(H) , equitability-index(e), species richness $index(d_1)$ were low, but dominance $index({delta}_2)$ was high at the value of 98.4 and dominant species was Nitzschia pungens. In conclusion, it seems that mass .mortality of arkshell seedlings in November was resulted from the metabolism disorder with poor food organism under the unstable marine environment.