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Activist warns time running out for Hong Kong’s pink dolphins

Dr. Samuel Hung, doesn’t mince words when it comes to discussing Hong Kong’s declining Chinese White Dolphin population.

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Pink dolphin in the Pearl River Estuary. Photo: SCMP Pictures

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Video: The SCMP takes a look at the conditions the pink dolphins face in the Pearl River Delta until 2016.

Dr. Samuel Hung, doesn’t mince words when it comes to discussing Hong Kong’s declining Chinese White Dolphin population.



“Ultimately, you have to blame the Hong Kong government,” he said.



 The 38-year-old Hong Kong biologist and director of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society is leading a grassroots campaign to preserve Hong Kong’s dolphin population.

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Hung, who has been advocating the cause of the pink dolphin - as they are known locally – for over a decade, says the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project, to be completed in 2016, will severely affect the city’s unique marine life.

The ongoing underwater construction in the Pearl River estuary is significantly disturbing the dolphins’ vital hearing function used for orientation. “You can imagine that with the bore piling activities that will be going on for the next three years the dolphins will be disturbed constantly. And, some of this work will also go on at night as well,” said Hung, speaking from a chartered boat in West Lantau, which he uses to regularly survey dolphin behavior.

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