Hong Kong's outlying islands paint an inviting picture - remote, lush and sparsely populated. For weekend tourists anxious for a break from the city, trips to these islands are both adventure and escape. For island residents they are home, joined to Hong Kong proper by a fragile lifeline of sampan services.
While access to the more popular islands is via legal ferries, or kaido, getting to and from more remote settlements is fraught with more than a little government red tape in the interest of water safety.
The Marine Department appears to have stepped up its enforcement of a law, which has effectively outlawed the use of sampans in these areas. The requirements that operators be licensed and ply only specific routes and destinations make a legal business operation practically unworkable for all but a few island destinations.
The outcry from isolated villagers needing transport for things such as medical care has been vocal. And there are other interests, such as a major rehabilitation centre, which is threatened by the law's enforcement. A common thread of complaint is that the government has been too eager to enforce the law without providing adequate alternatives for affected areas.
The Marine Department continues to show little sympathy and is prosecuting unlicensed sampan operators it catches transporting passengers of any kind.
The dwindling and ageing residents of these fly-speck outposts see ready access to the islands as a question of life and death for their own way of life.
As sampan owners continue to run the gauntlet, some remote island residents remain unaware that their sole mode of regular transport, which their families have used for generations, is actually illegal.