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SCMP Reporter

PLANS have been announced for a three-month dredging project to take place right in the centre of the Government's proposed dolphin sanctuary.

  Campaigners said the project proved the plan to create a $21 million sanctuary would make no difference to the threatened pink dolphins.

  There are only about 80 pink dolphins left and about one is found dead each month.

  'This puts further questions about the role and effectiveness of a sanctuary for dolphins,' said Jo Ruxton, World Wide Fund for Nature senior conservation officer.

  China Light and Power is to lay a submarine power cable between Sha Chau and Lung Kwu Chau, two islands north of Lantau in the centre of the area where most of the dwindling population of pink dolphins now live.

  Work on the cable, to supply the radar at Lung Kwu Chau operated by the Civil Aviation Department, is to start in March.

  China Light and Power spokesman Albert Chan Yu-chung said the company had timed the project in March to avoid the dolphins' mating season, and seabed work would be limited to 12 days.

  'We will stop work as soon as we see any dolphin within 500 metres,' he said.

  Dolphin researcher Lindsay Porter of the Swire Institute of Marine Science said the most likely effect would be dolphins driven elsewhere.

  'Why call it a sanctuary when it's anything but that?' she asked.

  Although the cash for the sanctuary has been granted by the Legislative Council, the exact area to be covered has yet to be released. It is expected to be centred on Sha Chau.

  As well as China Light and Power's cable, the Provisional Airport Authority is building a fuel depot on a platform near Sha Chau and will need to lay fuel pipes from there to the airport at Chek Lap Kok.

  There are also plans to create a deepwater shipping channel running either through the sanctuary or close by, needing constant dredging.



Dredging to hit dolphin sanctuary