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.
4.2.1
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 7, 12, 19 and 22 October 2020. The survey routes are presented in Figures 2
to 5 of Appendix
O.
4.3.1.2
During the 7 and 19 October 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 254.00 km of survey effort was
collected, with 100% 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 93.30 km and 160.70 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 186.96 km and
67.04 km, respectively (Annex
I of Appendix
O).
4.3.1.5
During the reporting period, no CWD was
sighted at all.
4.3.1.6
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 October 2020 are presented in Table 4.1 &
Table 4.2.