Mismanagement and lack of targets causing Hong Kong’s marine parks to suffer

A report on Hong Kong’s marine parks found they are not being managed on scientific lines and that there are no hard targets to expand the protected areas.

The parks make up just 2 per cent of the city’s waters, but environmental group WWF-Hong Kong, which funded the Chinese University study, said this should be enlarged to at least 10 per cent by 2020 and 30 per cent by 2030.

It is in the process of updating a marine ecology “hot spot” map to identify waters suitable for immediate protection, such as west Lantau, south Lantau’s Shui Hau, the Ninepin Islands and Sharp Island.

Five marine parks and a marine reserve currently make up the 2,430 hectares of protected waters.

Professor Ang Put of the university’s Marine Science Laboratory pointed out in the report that each marine park appeared to be managed individually without much consideration of their functional connectedness.