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 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, 8, 18 and 23 February 2021. The survey routes are presented in Figures 2 to
5 of Appendix O.
4.3.1.2
During the 2 and 18 February 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 2 & 4 of Appendix O.
4.3.1.3
A total of 261.83 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 97.70 km and 164.13 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 194.39 km and
67.44 km, respectively (Annex
I of Appendix O).
4.3.1.5
During the reporting period, a total of five
groups of 13 CWD were sighted in NWL and no CWD sighted in NEL. Four of the
five dolphin sightings were made on the primary lines during on-effort search,
and none of them was not associated with any operating fishing vessel (Annex II of Appendix
O).
4.3.1.6
Two larger groups
of CWDs were sighted at the southwestern end of NWL survey or just to the north
of the HKLR alignment, while the other three dolphin sightings (all being
singletons) were scattered to the north east of Lung Kwu
Chau as well as at the northwestern corner of the 3RS
work site. Notably, the five dolphin groups were all 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 February 2021 are presented in Table 4.1 & Table 4.2.
4.3.2
Photo-identification
Work
4.3.2.1
Nine known CWD were sighted nine times in total (Annexes
III and IV of Appendix O). All of them
were re-sighted only once during this month of monitoring surveys.
4.3.2.2
Notably, two mothers (i.e. WL98 and WL145) were
both sighted with their young calves in this monitoring month.