Pink Dolphins in Hong Kong

This week I finally booked a tour to take a look at the famous pink dolphins of HK and I must tell you - it was well worth it. We boarded a junk from the Hong Kong Dolphinwatch Company in Tung Chung/Lantau Island and cruised the waters for about 45 minutes. Mostly these dolphins are seen north of Lantau and had been unknown to the world until the early 90s when they started building the new airport at Chek Lap Kok which put them into the spotlight. We were told that they are born dark grey, fade into a lighter shade of grey when they're about 8 months old and keep on changing their colour over the next couple of years, sometimes grey spots remain. The fellow below reminds me of my times as a competition swimmer when I used to swim backstroke.

Their average life span is about 40 years but the dolphins in HK won't survive much more than 20 years due to the deterioration of the environment, meaning
* a damaged ecosystem and seabed due to reclaiming many coastal areas for building new airports, shipping terminals, roads, etc.

* being caught in fishing nets and drowning

* having an ever shrinking home due to heavy sea traffic - large amounts of passenger and freight ships are crossing through that area which raises the danger of the dolphins getting hit and it also puts a lot of stress on them (loud noises from boat engines) which results in a weakend immune system followed by sickness such as ulcers or pneumonia

*polluted waters - HK flushes about 2 million tonnes of sewage into the sea daily from which approx. 400 million litres go directly into north Lantau where the dolphins are living. Much more sewage is coming down from the Pearl River, which drains 1/8 of China's population. This means even if sewage treatment will step up in HK, if it's not matched in the Mainland, the HK dolphins still face serious risks.

We were also told that about half of the dead dolphins each year are newborns. A first-born baby for example receives a decade of accumulated toxins from its mother via the milk and therfore becomes an easy victim of pollution. A dead dolphin in HK is declared "being toxic waste" - isn't this just plain awful? Just picture them nibbling on a plastic bag because they think it's a jelly fish....below I'll attach the picture of a completely dirty beach we came across while hiking on Cheung Chau, most of the waste being washed ashore from people throwing it overboard from their ships, arrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhh :-(





Despite these depressing facts we were very excited spotting them which is not an easy task since they don't tend to appear in packs. You really have to keep your eyes focussed on the water surface to not miss the second they'll stick their heads out. We were fortunate to even see a mother/baby duo which was super cute. I have to say that they were also much pinker than I expected them to be. Of course I can't take credit for having taken these pictures - no way I could have done this with my small camera. The photographer responsible for them accompanies the tours 3 times a week since years and sometimes gets lucky to catch the perfect shot - a lot of patience is needed though.....HEY, are you still with me or did you fall asleep trying to read through all that "stuff", I know from experience that the attention spans are low these days :-) Take care and I hope you'll recover!