A new experience at HKDCS

Hi everybody! I am Tiffany, a new intern who joined the HKDCS since the beginning of October.  Few months ago, I completed my science undergraduate program in Waterloo, Canada and was thinking whether I should pursue a Master’s degree. As a biology student, I have explored various topics in this field and found that the research done on marine biology and conservation is something which interests me all along.  I decided to get more research experience through this internship and have a better idea of how my career path will be like.

Time flies and I am starting my fourth week with HKDCS already. I felt great to have learned and experienced so much in such a short time. From understanding how land-based and boat surveys were conducted, I realized that communication between team members is very important to gather accurate research data. I got a taste of being an observer and operator during line-transect surveys, acoustic boat surveys and theodolite tracking. Given that I have little experience in field work research, everything was new to me.  However, things worked out easily as the staff was exceptionally helpful and nice. Thanks everyone!!! In the past few weeks, I have seen how the living environment of the cetaceans is threatened by all the busy marine traffic and construction work happening right now. It is surprising how they can survive in these waters. I hope I can learn more about these amazing marine mammals and how they can be protected.

Right from the start, I was very fortunate to see several groups of Chinese white dolphins on my first day, including a few pairs of mother and calf which I could hardly forget. This was something I have not expected and was very memorable :)  It made me excited whenever I see the dolphins and hopefully I can get to see the finless porpoise as well by the end of my internship. Last week, I saw a well-known dolphin called Ringo which is easy to spot with the scar around his neck. I was told that Ringo might have got his scar when he was caught in a fishnet earlier in his years and outgrew from it later. This evidence is important in showing the impact of human activities had on the dolphins and made me think more deeply in what we can do to reduce these adverse outcomes.

(Can you see Ringo?)

That’s all for now.  Hope there will be more updates soon.

Cheers,

Tiffany

Final spurt

The last two weeks of my internship with the HKDCS are dawning and I look back at some busy weeks.

We finished our surveys at Tai Ho Wan, which is a good thing. They really were an important and time-consuming part of our effort in the last 1.5 months. In the last weeks, we also sighted quite a few dolphins a little further out around the Brother Islands. This area is by no means less busy than closer to shore, thus it is surprising, but at the same time promising, that we still see dolphins there.

I've also spent quite some time on the acoustic boat. We managed to get some very good recordings. I even heard croaker fish! It is shocking, though, how much noise some of these boats and construction vessels produce. Imagine an animal that is so highly reliant on acoustics for orientation having to cope with such an environment! Just again, I find it really amazing that we still see dolphins in the area under these conditions. And it makes me worry about the many dolphins we see in West Lantau, once the bridge construction really starts.

One survey brought me further south to South Lantau.  I again didn't see any of the mysterious porpoises, but it really is such a beautiful area. We even saw a sea eagle and what felt like thousands of little fish jumping out of the water. Nature can be so amazing!

Winter is slowly starting here in HK. While temperatures are still high (and it thus is more like "winter"), we have days with extremely poor visibility due to winds from the continent. I've been told that's the usual weather during winter. Considering it being caused by pollution from the mainland, it's actually really shocking to see the extent.

Stay tuned for what is yet to come.

Anke

Halftime

It’s unbelievable, but half of my internship is over already. Time really does fly. And there still are new things to learn, whether it’s new stations or survey types. Last week we collected some dolphin dive times in Tai O. It’s really a most favorable place for watching dolphins from land and conveniently close to my home away from home, too. I for sure will be back to just sit there and watch some dolphins on a free day.

While we saw many dolphins in Tai O, unfortunately the remaining week was marked with only few and mainly very brief sightings, no matter if it was from the boat or from land. But I’ve been told one of the other teams had a great sighting, so it’s good to know that the dolphins are still around and we were just unlucky. We also finally started our acoustic surveys, which is really exciting!

On a more personal note it also was my birthday last week. My team of that day surprised me with a cake. Isn’t this just awesome!

The moon and the rabbit

Hey everyone!

If one thing is for sure then that interning with the HKDCS certainly never gets dull and I am looking back at an interesting and eventful week.

It started off with no dolphin sightings from the Tai Ho Wan land-based station. To make up for the lack of dolphins, we had many sightings during boat surveys later that week, including some very active individuals spy-hopping and breaching and head-lunging all around the boat.

This week was also the week of the Mid-Autumn- or Moon-Festival, an important holiday of the Chinese culture. As the name implies, it’s to celebrate the Moon and everybody had a day off. There also are fairs with light shows, sweets, dancing dragons and lots of people – everybody wearing or carrying some sort of colourful light. And eating mooncakes.

The moon and the rabbit are closely tied together by Chinese legends. Thus it might not seem really surprising that the Moon-Festival was followed by typhoon Usagi (which means “rabbit” in Japanese). It even made it into the news as the biggest and strongest storm on Earth this year. And it does look a bit like a rabbit, doesn’t it? As it was aiming for a direct hit we of course had to cancel all our scheduled surveys. 

                                                                  (Source)

                                                                   (Source)

So I staid put in Tai O for two days and followed the track of the cyclone online. Having never been in a typhoon, as we don’t get such things in Germany, it was actually quite interesting to see the track changing with sometimes funny bends, track predictions, strength changes and so on. Of course there was a big tautness, especially because till the very last no one knew whether Usagi would eventually hit the city of Hong Kong, or not. After following the course of the coastline for a while and thus really aiming for us, it decided to turn north-west-wards a little earlier, taking most of its strength with it.  Though it wasn’t the first typhoon this season, it still was the most powerful and closest in a long time. While I never felt unsafe and it certainly was an interesting experience, I nevertheless do hope that it was the last one for this year.

There she goes again

Hey there. Another week has passed and it’s time for a little update from Hong Kong. Last week started of with a Welcome and Goodbye dinner (bye bye Danielle!). It was so much fun and all we foreigners were amazed about how much the others managed to eat: while we were full after halfway through, the team continued and kept ordering and ordering all different kinds of delicious looking foods. I wished I wasn’t full, because they really looked and smelled yummy!

Another highlight of this week certainly was the visit of an acoustic expert, who provided us with a brief introduction into acoustic work. It was so interesting and I certainly hope to get a little more insight into it during the next couple of weeks.

We also tried to find porpoises this week, but they still remain a mystery at the moment. To not be too disappointed though, and after teasing us with some waves, the weather god appeased us with a beautiful light show on our way home.

There is so much going on at the moment here at HKDCS and these are busy times. So I’m really looking forward what else is to come.

Anke