There are many reasons people visit Hong Kong, but it's beaches are not one of the. This is too bad because Hong Kong has some beautiful beaches, many of them quiet and isolated. On Lantau island where I live is Cheung Sha Beach, the longest in Hong Kong and quite pretty. Within walking distance for me there are two beaches. There is the main south beach, which although very pretty is too close (read right beside) the Ferry for me to consider swimming in. Then there is the quiet, currently undeveloped Sam Pak Wan beach by the north plaza.
The tragic thing is Hong Kong's waters are not very clean. There is a large amount of shipping and then there is its location right on the Pearl River Delta in China and all the pollution from there. This was really hit home to me on the weekend. Friday was World Oceans Day and in honour of this DB Green held one of it's beach clean up days. Since I had nothing on my calandar I decided to go to the beach and help out. Now I have done beach clean ups before and it is an issue the world over, but this weekend I found it very depressing.
This is a shot of the beach when I arrived. It doesn't look to bad does it?
Look again....
There was a beach clean up held here not that long ago. It was busy with over 100 volunteers helping out and it looked amazing afterwards, but as you can see it didn't take too long to get ugly again. It is very discouraging. It was also sad to see very few people turn up. However those that did were rewarded with a Sausage BBQ donated by Hemmingway's, one of our local eateries and a sampling of wines courtesy of Barefoot Winery.
Sadly as I was leaving, I looked out towards Hong Kong island and in the foreground I could see all the stuff we would soon be cleaning up yet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment