Megaprojects threaten Hong Kong’s iconic dolphins

“THE dolphin is clever, cute, kind, active and inoffensive. Exactly the character of Hong Kong.” So said a local member of a committee appointed by China to oversee the end of British rule over Hong Kong in 1997. The body had decided that the pink dolphin, a rare type sometimes seen cavorting in the territory’s harbour, would be a mascot of the handover festivities. Since then, however, the animal’s fate has not been an encouraging portent of the territory’s post-colonial progress. Hong Kong’s dolphins are in perilous decline.

They belong to a type of dolphin that lives off China’s shores called sousa chinensis, or the Chinese White (though they are grey when born and pinkish as adults). They prefer the brackish water of estuaries, where they are threatened by fishing and water-polluting factories. In Hong Kong there is a different danger: the relentless building of megastructures, including one of the world’s longest bridges. Before the British left they built an airport on 938 hectares (2,300 acres) of reclaimed land: a new runway is planned that will require 650 more.