The Project Director is the ultimate person for minimizing any ecological impacts including dolphin monitoring and marine traffic control. The supervising staff including Project Manager, Construction Manager, Superintendent, Site Foreman and the representative of subcontracts and specialist will assist the Project Director onsite to implement all precautionary and mitigation measures approved by the Statutory Authority and the Engineer.
The construction works are offsite works for marine dumping to East of Sha Chau Contaminated Mud Pit (CMP Vd) or (CMP Va), precast segment transportation and material delivery for concrete batching and asphalt mixing. Raw material for concrete production will be delivered from mainland to the floating concrete batching plant. The location of floating concrete batching plant could be referred to Figure 4. These working fleets will pass through part of Urmston Road Channel but not marine parks, hotspots of CWD in Northeast and Northwest of Lantau Island, tight marine travel routes control will still be implemented. When typhoon signal no. 3 or above is hoisted, the floating concrete batching plant will be anchored in Tuen Mun river trade terminal.
The vessel for transporting the materials will be installed with GPS system or course recorder system for the purposes of recording the marine travel route.
The daily records of marine travel route(s) of all offsite working fleets shall be collected and filed by supervising staff for inspection and monitoring purposes. Warning will be noticed to the captain and his shipping company or material supplier if vessel track log showed the approved marine travel route is not followed.
The marine traffic records and geographical plots of all the vessels tracks overlaid on HK base map will be provided at monthly interval to ER, ETL, IEC/ENPO to demonstrate the conformance of the vessel to the proposed route.
a) Considerations of Operation Procedure
The main issue with the Chinese White Dolphin is a moving vessel striking and injuring an animal during the period of travel. Information regarding the locations of frequent sighting near the proposed vessel routes indicated that the following would also be needed to minimize the chance of a vessel striking a dolphin.
If any dolphins are sighted within 250m of a vessel then the vessel will slow to a speed no greater than 5 knots for at least 3 minutes after the last sighting
b) Training
All captains of project related working fleets and the supervising staff should undergo training to learn about local dolphins and porpoises. They should be trained to be aware of the protocol for “dolphin friendly” vessel operation (refer to the Code of Conduct for Dolphin Watching Activities from AFCD) shown below:
· Maintain forward progress at a slow, steady speed or stop with no sudden course changes. Boat speed should not exceed 10 knots;
· Only one dolphin watching vessel should be within 500 meters of a group of dolphins;
· Always slow down to no-wake speed, or stop if animals appear directly ahead within 100 meters;
· Never approach the dolphins head on; approach at an angle;
· Never conduct reverse throttling in the vicinity of dolphins;
· Never chase or cut across the course of dolphins, separate mothers and calves, split up groups or 'corner' dolphins between boats, nets or shore;
· Never attempt to touch, swim with, or feed the dolphins;
· Do not litter or dispose of any fuel, oil or other pollutants in the waters;
· Respect the dolphins and let them make the choice to approach or flee. If a group of dolphins is difficult to observe and elusive, leave them alone and try to find a more cooperative group;
· When observing, always parallel the dolphin's course at slow speed;
· When observing dolphins which are following pair trawlers, the following need to be observed:
n the position of the dolphin watching vessel relative to the marker buoy of the trawl net should change as slowly as possible
n Do not move away immediately or at high speed after trawlers have hauled up the net Move away from the area at low speed very cautiously and ONLY after the dolphins have dispersed
The dolphin specialist is responsible to provide training to the trainers - the project approved Environmental Officer / assigned person, with over 3 years construction site and EM&A experience (Train the Trainer Scheme).
This training course has been well developed by Contract No. HY/2010/02, Contract No. HY/2013/03 will follow and provide the same training course (Including the considerations of operation procedure mentioned in Section 3.3a) to captains before the commencement works and refreshment course will be provided in every quarter.