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 25, 26, 27 and 28 January 2021. The survey routes are
presented in Figures 2
to 5 of Appendix O.
4.3.1.2
During the 26 and 28 January 2021 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
3 & 5
of Appendix O.
4.3.1.3
A total of 258.45 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 96.70 km and 161.75 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 192.56 km and 65.89 km,
respectively (Annex
I of Appendix O).
4.3.1.5
During the reporting period, a total of eight groups of 25
CWDs were sighted in NWL and no CWD sighted in NEL. Seven of the eight dolphin
sightings were made on the primary lines during on-effort search, and all
dolphin groups were not associated with any operating fishing vessel (Annex II of Appendix
O).
4.3.1.6
While the majority of the eight
dolphin sightings was sighted around Lung Kwu Chau,
there were also one group of eight dolphins sighted near the northwestern corner of the territorial boundary and another
group sighted to the west of the airport platform. Notably, all dolphin groups
were sighted 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 Jaunary 2021 are
presented in Table 4.1 & Table
4.2.
4.3.2
Photo-identification
Work
4.3.2.1
Thirteen known CWDs were sighted 14 times in total (Annexes III and IV of Appendix O). Twelve of them were re-sighted only
once, while one CWD (NL49) was re-sighted twice during this month of monitoring
surveys.
4.3.2.2
Notably, one mother (NL98) was sighted with her young calf
during this monitoring month.