1.
2.
3.
4.
ECOLOGY MONITORING
4.1.1
All
marine-based construction activities for the HKBCF project were completed in
January 2019. No marine-based construction activities will be undertaken under this
Contract. However, the ET of this Contract or another ET of the HZMB is
required to conduct post-construction dolphin monitoring in accordance with
Section 10.7 of the updated EM&A Manual.
4.1.2
Currently,
the role of dolphin monitoring and data collection are still under Contract No.
HY/2012/08 “Tuen Mun-Chek
Lap Kok Link – Northern Connection Sub-sea Tunnel
Section”. To avoid redundancy in the monitoring effort, the findings of
Contract No. HY/2012/08 were used for this reporting month. The relevant sections
of dolphin monitoring report of Contract No. HY/2012/08 for this reporting
month is extracted and given in Appendix O.
4.1.3
The
CV of the proposed dolphin specialist for this Contract has been submitted to
IEC for review prior to submission to AFCD for approval.
4.2
Monitoring Locations and
Methodology
4.2.1
In
accordance with the requirements of the updated EM&A manual, the dolphin
monitoring programme have adopted the standard line-transect method (Buckland
et al. 2001) to survey the pre-set and fixed transect lines defined by AFCD in
the Northeast Lantau (NEL) and Northwest Lantau (NWL) survey areas.
4.2.2
The
coordinates of the transect lines are shown in Table 1 of Appendix
O. The map of
the transect lines provided by AFCD is presented in Figure 4.
4.2.3
The
details of the line-transect method (Buckland et al. 2001) adopted in the
survey and the photo-identification work when Chinese White Dolphins (CWD) are
sighted are presented in Section
2 of Appendix O.
4.3.1
Vessel-based
Line-Transect Survey
4.3.1.1
Two sets of vessel-based line
transect surveys were conducted in NWL and NEL survey areas on 2, 7, 9 and 20 July 2020. The survey routes are presented
in Figures 2 to 5
of Appendix O.
4.3.1.2
During the 2 and 9 July 2020 surveys, several boats and
barges involved in construction works near the southern end of Transect Line
No. 8 were observed. Due to safety considerations, the survey vessel did not
traverse these areas. Therefore, only a partial survey of Transect Line No. 8
was conducted as shown in Figures
2 & 4
of Appendix O.
4.3.1.3
A total of 254.95 km of survey effort was collected, with
98.2% of the total survey effort being conducted under favourable weather
conditions (i.e. Beaufort Sea State 3 or below with good visibility) (Annex I of Appendix
O).
4.3.1.4
A total of 93.60 km and 161.35 km of survey effort were
collected from NEL and NWL survey areas, respectively while the total survey
effort conducted on primary and secondary lines were 189.76 km and 65.19 km,
respectively (Annex
I of Appendix O).
4.3.1.5
During the reporting period, a single CWD was sighted in NWL
and no CWD sighted in NEL. The dolphin sighting was made on the primary line
during on-effort search, and was not associated with any operating fishing
vessel (Annex
I of Appendix O).
4.3.1.6
The dolphin was sighted to the northeast of Lung Kwu Chau, which is very far away from the TMCLKL alignment
and the HKBCF work site. (Figure
6 of Appendix O)
4.3.1.7
Encounter rates of Chinese White Dolphin deduced from the
survey effort and on-effort dolphin sighting data made under favourable
conditions (Beaufort 3 or below) in July 2020 are presented in Table
4.1 &
Table 4.2.
4.3.2
Photo-identification
Work
4.3.2.1
The single CWD sighted was identified as NL202 (Annexes III and IV of Appendix O) and was
not sighted with any young calf.