The coastal zone is an important region and geomorphic unit in the sealand transition zone and has been subjected to the dual action and influence of land and sea dynamics. It contains different types of sedimentary facies and has experienced complex processes of dynamic deposition, geomorphological evolution and catastrophe. The coastal survey involves multidisciplinary cross amalgamation, relatively independent surveying elements and multidisciplinary content coexistence. Nationwide comprehensive surveys coastal zone were carried out in China respectively in 1960, 1983 and 2003 and a large number of fruitful results have been obtained. However, problems which are badly need of breaking through in the coastal survey and research have also been revealed. They are 1) In the coastal zone a large range of “blind areas” where no survey has been carried out are present and some inaccessible areas such as shallow and easily sinking areas, reef and mariculture areas, and so on, have become a data “blank area” and/or a surveying “forbidden area”; 2) In China, the coastal zone observation platforms are few and in a scattered distribution and a comprehensive and effective observation network has not yet been formed, leading to the lack of longtime series and multisource quasisynchronous survey data and making it difficult to grasp the change law of coastal zone accurately and solve the problems related to resources and environment; 3) The intelligence level of the acquisition of coastal zone data is so low that the timeliness and effectiveness of the relevant countermeasures are seriously restricted; 4)The model for collaborative survey and crossfusion research of different disciplines in the coastal zone field has not yet been established so that the scientific problems on coastal zones could not be found timely. It is therefore suggested that the future investigations of coastal zone should make breakthroughs in the acquisition technology of highresolution process data and fullcoverage and realtime dynamic data, the construction of long time series and comprehensive data acquisition platform, the acquisition and transmission of allweather data of land, sea and air and the fast intelligent decision, and the interdisciplinary and collaborative study of coastal zone.