Coral Symposium of Hong Kong 2024

On Saturday 23rd September 2024, LPC students, alumni and teachers were invited to the Symposium on Coral Conservation Hong Kong 2024.

There were keynote speakers in Dr. Suchana Apple Chavanich and Dr. Xiao Baohua, with their topics being “Decoding coral reefs and exploring their status and future conservation: a case study in Thailand”, and “Coral conservation in Greater Bay Area”, respectively. These expert views allowed us to understand how our neighbours were tackling the issue of coral degradation in their own contexts, providing us with ideas that we could adapt to our own situation.

The symposium also heard from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the Hong Kong government on the current situation of coral bleaching in Hong Kong, which highlighted the grave situation of coral in 2024, with bleaching events happening across all areas of Hong Kong. Coral bleaching occurs when waters are too warm, causing the corals to expel their symbiotic algae, and while , if the waters eventually cool, the coral can recover from this, it is also the first stage in the death of a coral.

Dr. David Baker and Dr. Apple Chui then provided their presentations on the strategies to restore and defend coral from the threats they face in Hong Kong.

Dr. David Baker,  interim director of the Swire Insitute for Marine Science and co-founder and chief scientist for Archireef, presented “Drastic times call for drastic measures”, illuminated the need for active conservation to ramp up, with three key areas for protection: scaling up restoration through public-private partnerships, ‘re-wilding’ (restoring ecosystems), and assisted migration (translocating corals from tropical to sub-tropical zones).

Dr. Apple Chui, from the School of Life Sciences at Chinese University of Hong Kong presentation focussed on the work she and her colleagues at CUHK were doing for coral restoration. She spoke of the success of the restoration project in Tolo Harbour, close to LPCUWC, and the importance of scaling up the projects to increase the impact.

Sebastian Pilacuàn Botticini, one of LPCUWC student coral monitors, refleted on the experience from the symposium:

“It was an amazing opportunity and platform to understand the environmental challenges that corals are facing in the context Hong Kong and Thailand and learn about different perspectives and strategies of conservationism including reproduction, fragmentation, and habitat restoration. The presentations were a truly eye-opening experience that expanded my curiosity and perspective, inspiring me to further educate myself.

This provided valuable insights for the Marine sustainability and Coral monitoring team to approach our mission through diverse solutions, exploring the efficiency and applicability of strategies in the context of Hong Kong.”

The LPCUWC coral monitoring team is truly thankful for the opporunity to learn from these experts, build new and enhance existing relationships with them and hopefully contribute more in the future towards conserving and restoring the coral biodiversity of Hong Kong.