Long awaited update

Hello again,

            Here is a long over-due update on my internship thus far. July was a crazy month for the HKDCS, with their heavy workload monitoring the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge construction, conducting baseline surveys for the Third Runway Airport Expansion EIA report, and carrying out regular monitoring surveys for the AFCD department of Hong Kong. Yet on top of all that the HKDCS partakes in an annual book fair at the end of July as well, where they sell educational books concerning dolphins as well as other plants and animals local to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Needless to say, with that workload everyone here has been very busy.

            I had family visit during July, so I’ve been off for a while. My first Monday back however, was in fact today. I helped conduct an underwater acoustic survey of the noise environment in the vicinity of the bridge construction works. We are doing this to monitor the noise pollution that comes from the pile-driving construction activities. It was really interesting to hear how the underwater noise environment sounds. We also had some good sightings today as well. It was great to see the dolphins being quite active, breeching and spy-hopping everywhere! Definitely a welcomed sight after some time away from them!

            Although July was a crazy month, more hard work is needed as well in August as there is a new development project that the HKDCS will be involved with. This project involves further land reclamation in an area that is highly important for the Indo-pacific Humpback dolphins. Therefore, we here at the HKDCS will be hard at work trying to protect our most favorite marine species from further human encroachment!

Until my next post,

Danielle