The Hong Kong Sea-shore — an Environment in Crisis

Abstract

Hong Kong comprises an area of some 400 square miles (1,036 km2) and a population of 4.5 million people largely living in an urban and city complex centred around a magnificent natural harbour. Such an urbanized community, hemmed in by mountains, is separate from the hitherto rural remainder of Hong Kong.The geographical position of Hong Kong, lying as it does on the borders of the temperate and tropical zoogeographic regions, when correlated with a local diversity of geomorphological and hydrological eccentricities, creates a fascinating assemblage of littoral biotic communities within a small area. The expanding urban area, however, resulting from a population growth that is confidently expected to reach 5.5–6.5 millions by 1991, is encroaching into the rural and coastal areas.The demand for low-lying flat land has resulted in official and unofficial reclamations, initially of soft shores which are of significant archaeological and ethnological interest. The same shores constitute Hong Kong's countryside, but people bathe in waters that are grossly polluted by human and agricultural effluents, so that coliform bacterial counts in excess of 106 per 100 ml have been recorded. Squatter huts still dot Hong Kong's coastline despite massive rehousing projects, and shellfish are widely collected. Moreover, oysters are cultivated and not cleansed prior to resale.No coastal parks, conservation areas, reserves, or even a coastal code, actually exists. The sea-shore is not used as an ‘open-air laboratory’, nor as an educational tool except at the tertiary level.In such a community the sea-shore demands special attention, and in a world that is approaching urbanization as a way of life, Hong Kong, as a microcosm of south-east Asia, offers a case in point and a lesson in survival.