For Hong Kong’s Chinese white dolphins, extinction is the ‘most likely outcome’ if nothing is done to save population
More than two decades after the animal had its moment in the spotlight as the mascot of the Hong Kong handover, scientists have come together to conserve the iconic marine mammal’s habitat
I have been waiting for weeks to get out on the water, but black rainstorms and typhoon warnings – signposts of Hong Kong’s capricious summer – kept my feet firmly, frustratingly on dry land. When I do eventually step aboard the boat chartered by the Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project (HKCRP) and the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society at Tung Chung one early June morning, the sky is a brilliant blue and the rising sun glares off the construction cranes reclaiming the sea for the airport’s third runway.
As we sail southwest along Lantau Island’s rugged, emerald coastline, Vincent Ho Chung-shun, a research associate with HKCRP, points towards the Macau skyline and the turbines of the Guishan Offshore Windfarm near Zhuhai, estimating visibility at about 40km – perfect conditions for observing Hong Kong’s marine mammals, he says, something the organisation has been doing since 1995.
Several times a week throughout the year, funded by the government’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), HKCRP sets out to methodically survey Hong Kong’s waters to monitor the population of Chinese white dolphins – also known as pink dolphins for the blush colour they acquire as adults – and finless porpoises. According to conservation body WWF-Hong Kong, there has been an 80 per cent drop in dolphin abundance in Hong Kong waters over the past 15 years, all due to human interference.
“Unless we take deep, strong, urgent measures, you wouldn’t call extinction a threat, you would call it the most likely outcome,” says Laurence McCook, head of oceans conservation at WWF-Hong Kong.
“When we see any animals – any dolphins or porpoises – we record their position and other relevant information, how many there are, their age, what they are doing, and we will try and take pictures to identify them,” says Ho, whose exactitude gives way to emotion when speaking about the creatures to which he has devoted his career.
Asked whether he and the small team of researchers tasked with monitoring the cetaceans have named any of the animals, Ho laughs dismissively. “That’s too romantic,” he says. “We just give them a code. For example, if it was the first dolphin seen in west Lantau, it would be WL01.” Later, however, he admits to having some “old friends”, before rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a Chinese white dolphin. “Like this one – Square Fin – her code was NL24 […] I can’t remember the last time I saw her, maybe 2015 or 2014. She disappeared, most likely she is dead.”
