WWF’s Andy Cornish is trying to save endangered shark species, before it is too late
- Hong Kong is the epicentre of the global shark fin trade and accounts for about 40 per cent of the market
- Cornish, who grew up ‘chasing snakes’ in the city, is working to recover critically endangered shark and ray populations
Wild child: I was born in Chertsey, in Surrey, in the UK, in 1970, and my younger brother was born a year later. When I was two, my dad, who was an engineer, took a two-year contract at Hong Kong University and we moved to Hong Kong. My father had grown up in Baghdad and Taiwan because his father was in the diplomatic corps and he enjoyed being outside the UK. My mum was enthusiastic about exploring Hong Kong and we’d go on little ferries to the islands.
We grew up in High West, the university accommodation next to Pok Fu Lam Reservoir, and my brother and I spent our time after school chasing snakes and swimming and fishing in the reservoir. We were both obsessed with animals and had all kinds of weird and wonderful pets.
I had three fish tanks in my bedroom for years and remember my brother bringing home a rat snake that he’d found at the reservoir. He released it on the balcony where it zoomed around and threatened to bite anyone who went near it – our parents were amazingly tolerant. I went to Kennedy Road School – there was a rising sun above the playground that was left over from the Japanese occupation – and then to Island School.
More the merrier: Our family went to Union Church on Sundays. The caretaker of the church was a Vietnamese lady who had escaped the Vietnam war. She had some issues, so social services took her children away – two daughters and a son. My parents offered to look after the children until their mother was better. So, the three children moved into our house – the first daughter is a year older than me, my second sister about my age, and the brother eight years younger than me.
Many years later, when I was 16, it became clear that the issues with the mother weren’t going to go away, so my parents formally adopted the children. After my A-levels, I took a gap year and went with Operation Raleigh to Cameroon and spent three months living rough in the rainforest. We built a 100-metre suspension bridge into Korup National Park, supported health workers in the local villages, and camped and moved around doing snake and moth surveys.