intern exp =]

The first week of internship is a training week. I have to read many data about dolphins and whales, and annual reports to government. That can make me rich in knowledge of dolphins and hence help me to handle the field works well.

        The land-base field works in Tai O let me observe the behaviors of humpback dolphin clearly and I have learnt finishing the works by GPS and theodolite. The theodolite can accurately detect the position of dolphins and boats.

    

        In the boat observation, I have to adapt the differences from the land to the boat physically, and the long-tern observation with telescope. Also I have to learn how to distinguish the different levels of wave and the format of information recording.

        In the school speech, I can learnt the technique of speech and know more about educational information.

 

The second week of internship is a training week. I started to try entering the researched data about Chinese white and finless porpoise last week. That data can make me know the distribution of dolphin in HK waters. Also the press conference impress me very much that how a NGO to proclaim message to the public and the message from Samuel inspire me how to consider the poin the long-tern observation with telescope t of views of new policy of government, especially the tricky statements and the motivation.

 

        In the boat observation, I started to try do locating which is the long-tern observation with telescope and the recorder of data. For me, I think the difficulty is hold the telescope and search for dolphins for 30mins. The boat is instable which increases the difficulty on focusing and which is very exhausted. The solution is spending longer and longer time to adapt physical problems. And I think it would be solved very soon.

Invaluable Experience - Internship@HKDCS

This is my first entry on the HKDCS Intern's Blog. In just the first two weeks of the whole internship program, i have gained a lot of great experience which I never expected when deciding to apply this program.

In the first day of work, I came to the office early in the morning. After all the full time stuff came back, the doorbell rang again. I knew the person must be the other intern student. A boy or a girl? Can I get along well with him or her? A lot of question came to my mind. He is a boy. A boy who seems I met before. He sat down and introduced himself. His name is Nekky. Then I asked a embarrassing question, “What is your full Chinese name?”. He smiled and spoke out my full name. It’s just amazing! My intern partner is my primary school friend who I lost his contact for over 10 years! The fate leads me to join this internship program and leads me to meet my old friend! A great beginning of my internship!

In the next day, we started our land-based survey training on using Theodolite to track dolphins and boats. I started to experience the harsh working environment my colleagues always facing. I felt I was inside a microwave oven, heat and heat and burn. I really got sunburn! And this was just the second day of my 3-month internship program! I knew I may face even harsher working environment in coming weeks, but I am ready to overcome them!

The most important component of the research work done by HKDCS is the line-transect boat survey. This is a challenge to me because I get seasick easily. With the help of anti-seasick pills and auto-adaptation, I feel much better now when travelling on the boat now. I hope I can throw the pills away few weeks later. After 5 boat-survey trainings involved both off-effort and on-effort, I found that it is very difficult to discover the appearance of dolphins using telescope especially at high beaufort levels. It requires 100% concentration. I knew I missed sighting of CWDs when I was the primary observer in a true on-effort survey. I must put more effort on using the telescope.

Moreover, I also took part in educational talks and press conference. That's my first time to take part in a press conference. That really widens my horizon. Thought the press conference, I understood more about the drastic decrease of the number of CWDs and their worsening living environment likely caused by the increasing trend of high-speed ferry traffic, reduction of fishery resources and underwater noise. Also, it gave me an insight about the topic-in-the-limelight, the proposed 3^rd runway. But it left me a question, “How can we have win-win situation for economic development and conservation of environment?”.

Thanks to this internship program which provides me a great variety of experience. I am now very excited about the coming 3^rd week of internship life with my lovely colleagues and Nekky. I hope I can make continuous improvement of my performance and I am looking forward to experience more!

Last but not least, I really realize how bad my hand writing is! I must try my best to improve it!

Trip to ZhuHai, China

      Last week the trip to China was nice, I went on the boat survey for three days. The survey vessel we are using is a shrimp trawler, a fishing boat with outriggers with a forward deckhouse. During fishing operation, the outriggers extend out over the sides of the vessel to for fishing nets dragging. We started catching fish after work and preparing for the seafood feast! We had lots of little crabs, shrimps and fish, they were super fresh and yummmmm♥ Vincent told me they got a huge cod the evening after I left, so jealous>.<

      We had a few sightings each day in Lingding Bay, including unspotted calve sighting. The little baby dolphin was so cuteee, always surfacing with her mother. She seems like she’s struggling with the wavy sea surface, swimming up awkwardly. She’s accompanied by several adults and an unspotted juvenile, looks like they are having a nice family time. Looking at this peaceful scene, I could truly understand the value marine mammals living freely in the wild without any constraints.

robin

Movie: "The Cove"

        'The Cove’ was one of the most influential, and perhaps heartbreaking documentary movie I have ever seen. It is about issues of dolphin slaughter that takes place regularly in a quiet cove in Taiji, Japan. Thousands of dolphins are trapped, some are captured and sold to dolphin aquariums, but most to be brutally killed for food. The team of activist, filmmakers and free divers are on a mission to record footages of the slaughter to expose it to the world. They go in at night with night vision and set up camera disguised as ordinary rocks. Since the local people will do anything to protect their secret slaughter, it’s an act of incredible risk to infiltrate the cove. According to the film, most of the people in Japan have no idea about the dolphin harvest in Taiji and they don’t eat dolphin. They have a right to know that the government is letting the sale of mislabeled meat and is toxic (high level of mercury concentration). So why does these horrifying acts still happening and will the people in Taiji survive without doing this? To me this is an interesting aspect of the film. This documentary film isn’t trying to give the audiences an opinion, it is only filmed to give you a view of a situation. I think it is not propaganda, meaning the audiences are able to understand if the point of view is a truthful illustration of the topic because it isn’t just a single side of the controversy.

        For me the footages of dolphin slaughtering certainly deliver the unethical process. This is like seeing a baby seal beat to death, except we might think baby seals are adorable. The Cove also emphasizes dolphins are smart animals that they are self-conscious. A few scenes in the movie are showing bleeding dolphins struggle for their last breath, to actually see their suffering, is devastating. The Cove is hard to watch sometimes, and the slaughter scenes are certainly not for the heartache but it is something that needed to be exposed. I hope the movie will bring a slight change in whaling policy, it’d be more helpful for the audiences willing to do more than just hand clapping.

robinnnnn

helloooooo

        It’s been a delightful experience going out for boat survey, enjoying the moments with these beautiful and energetic creatures in the wild^^ Before entering HKDCS I didn’t have much knowledge about dolphins and the problems they are facing in the world, I was getting the wrong messages from sea aquariums about marine mammals captivity and welfare. I have misunderstood the information that whales and dolphins performing in aquariums are living in standard, don’t need to worry about food and having a good time with ‘smile’ on their faces. When I actually go on the boat survey to watch wild dolphins swimming freely, chasing fish occasionally and relaxing in the afternoon, I realized that captivity for them is unethical and causes several physical, mental health problems leading to high mortality rate. Two weeks after my internship has started, I slowly built up my knowledge about the ecology and ranging patterns of cetaceans, humpback dolphin and finless porpoise in particular. Every effort made in the field and slight changes of the environmental variables recorded on datasheet can have significant alternation on the results, therefore it’s crucial to keep the errors in minimum. Consistency is another essential part of doing line transect surveys, it allows a comparison of results over different temporal scales, and to detect changes from both population and individual levels.

robin

My intership is coming to an end

I am finishing my internship with a session of land-based observation in Tai O tomorrow. It has been a great pleasure working with everyone at HKDCS/HKCRP and I thank them for their support in the past two months. I am also grateful for their friendship, without which it would not have been possible for them to tolerate my millions of questions (sorry can't help it - I love questions!). I would like to give a special shout-out to Samuel, who has been so supportive of my work in the internship programme as well as my dissertation work. Thank you very much!

In this internship, I have learnt a lot about cetaceans and local conservation work on them. I am glad to have been introduced to the wild dolphins and porpoises in a scientific way, and it definitely helped me better understand how these animals can be studied in the field. I hope everyone will do their part, however seemingly insignificant, to protect these magnificant creatures and the environment which we all live in.

Dolphins said goodbye...

It was Theresa's last day at work yesterday. We surveyed North-West and West Lantau and had 17 sightings in total. We said that the dolphins came to say goodbye to Theresa :-) It's been a great pleasure working with her and she's taught me so much in the past two months. I wish her success in the future.

We met a group of playful juveniles in the afternoon and recorded their sounds while they socialised. Sometimes they were so loud that we heard them even without putting the headphones on! Theresa had to help Vincent make the recordings, so I was put in charge of photographing dolphins for the first time. They surfaced together for most of the time so it wasn't too difficult to spot them and photograph their dorsal fins.

On another occasion, I spotted a dolphin which the two observers on shift had missed. Vincent (not on shift at the time) confirmed it as an off-effort sighting. I think I've definitely become very sensitive to the presence of dolphins now!