Busy weeks

Hi !

The weather is turning cool now which is just perfect for field research! In the past weeks, I had more opportunities to conduct boat surveys, especially for those near South Lantau and Lamma Island. These areas are popular to get sightings of the finless porpoise and fortunately we are starting to see them around. At times, the sea conditions in those areas are pretty rough due to the strong tides and we even got records of Beaufort 5. I think it was the strongest Beaufort I have experienced so far and luckily no one in our survey team got sick. As for the Chinese white dolphins, they were mostly spotted near Sha Chau, Lung Kwu Chau and West Lantau these days. We also got some sightings in South Lantau which are not so common at this time of the month. I wonder if the construction of the HKMZ bridge is a possible reason for this.

Other than doing surveys, I got the chance to visit the office more often. I learned how to process the survey data and was able to help out in a mini project conducted by the HKDCS. Due to the Hong Kong International Airport’s third runway proposal, it is expected that the habitat of the Chinese white dolphins will be greatly disturbed and may result in a drop of dolphin numbers. The project is basically a simplified Social Return on Investment (SROI) assessment of the economic impacts that the decline of dolphin population has on the dolphin watch industry. We decided to collect our data through questionnaires and interviews, so there will be lots to prepare in the coming weeks! I can’t wait to know the results of the project, especially on how Hong Kong citizens and tourists value our Chinese white dolphins. Hopefully, it will be something encouraging!

Please stay tuned for more updates...

Beautiful sunset in Tung Chung

 with the HKMZ bridge's construction site at the horizon  

Tiffany ^_^