Finally, I was able to visit Shum Wat twice! It is one of
the important stations for land-based survey, so I was hoping to go there for a long time. The station in
Shum Wat was far away from the bus terminal and took us about 45 minutes of walk to the survey site. On our way to the hiking trail, I was able to
enjoy the rural scenery of Tai O, especially for the stilt houses inside the
village. Since I don’t usually come here, I felt like I was going for an outing more than work =)
Tai O village and wala wala boats
Stilt houses
On my first time to
Shum Wat, the wind was pretty strong
and we got a record of Beaufort 4-5. Although it was
quite difficult to do the scans, we were
able to spot two dolphins appearing about 300 m away from the shore. They were
swimming towards the Shum Wat Bay but we lost track of them
shortly afterwards. I think it was one of the closest encounters I ever had when doing land-based
surveys; I could even see their skin patterns clearly through
the binoculars! As for the second time, the weather was very hazy
and since the dolphins were spotted far away, we failed to track all of the
groups. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time there. Apart from the dolphins, I have noticed the construction area of the
HKZM Bridge has been expanding ever since. The structure
of the main bridge could be
clearly identified now and there were more construction boats
stationing in the area. Knowing that the Chinese white dolphins also live in the waters near Shum Wat, I hope we can still see them around after the bridge
was built.
Shum Wat station, with the HKZM bridge construction site at far
Our little friend basking in the sun
Tiff =)
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