Week 7

On Monday we got up nice and early and scouted a few more villages around the base of Wuzhishan. We then headed back home to chill out after our long weekend of work. In the evening we headed to “Pirates!” restaurant for dinner – yummy ; )

On Tuesday we spent the morning cleaning up the house (fun). I then headed to the dreaded market to do some weekly shopping. I have very mixed feelings with respect to this place. Bustling with activity and a multitude of fascinating products the market is always interesting to visit, yet on each venture there I am confronted with sites that annoy or disgust me. The first time I visited I was shocked (but not surprised) by the dried seahorses and shark fins and the second time I spied the grouper and the juvenile sharks. This time I was saddened to see a fresh shipment of marine life turn up, unlike fish markets at home all of these animals are very much alive, stuffed into tanks until they can barely move. Buckets of fish were being loaded onto a three wheeler (a 125cc bike with side cart), amongst the animals were juvenile titan trigger fish Balistoides viridescens (little larger than my hand), moray eels (Family Muranidae), stonefish (Family Synanceiidae), boxfish (Family Ostracidae), mantis shrimps (Order Stomatopoda), batfish (Family Ephippidae) as well as many others. The Chinese are extremely willing to eat fish of any size, quality or flavour. This could pose a problem to the long term sustainability of their fish stocks. Typically western fisheries try and target a few fish species that have the best and most flavoursome flesh. The juvenile fish of some species are protected to a degree by measures such as minimum mesh sizes, fishing quotas, limits on fishing effort and marine protected areas. The fish at the market at Sanya have been afforded none of this protection. Many are juveniles and have never produced young. They never will. Such fishing is completely unsustainable and wreaks havoc upon marine ecosystems. Having made the comparison between asian and western fisheries I must add that very few western fisheries managers get things right…

The next day Will, Afa, Ed and myself headed to Jianfengling rainforest reserve to scout out a gorge trek. On arriving at the reserve entrance I was delighted to see Chinese sturgeon, Acipenser sinensis, lazily swimming circles in a large tank. These fantastic animals are long lived and can grow to massive sizes – the European sturgeon is capable of growing to 1000 kg (a rare event in today’s waters) and when caught in the medieval times had to be hauled from the water via plough horses! The fish is anadromous – i.e. eggs are laid in freshwater streams where the young grow and once at a certain size the juveniles head to the sea to rich feeding grounds to mature. Adults head back to their birth waters to spawn. Due to the large size of these fish they are easily hunted. These fish also require navigable, oxygen rich and free flowing rivers. Most of the rivers in China are damned multiple times and suffer from very poor quality. These factors combine to make the Chinese sturgeon (as well as the majority of sturgeon species) critically endangered. The information board stapled to the tank was highly suspect. It stated that the fish never needs to feed! Apparently its nutritional requirements are met by “magical energies”. Rounding the corner I found another info board, this one stating how fantastic the sturgeon flesh and caviar is! In all honesty I believe the centre is trying to enhance the sturgeon population, yet any fish released into the wild on Hainan would be fished from the water in hours due to the huge number nets, fishing lines and electrofishers. The fish would also most likely perish in the polluted and oxygen poor rivers of Hainan. I believe the Chinese sturgeon could well perish in my lifetime.

After watching the sturgeon we headed to the gorge. I was delighted to find it fairly remote and free of tourists. The river here was wide and flowed clear. Sadly I did spy a few pipes feeding the river with sewage, which I doubt had been treated in anyway. On closer inspection of the river bed I was rewarded by discovering a few sessile caddis (Trichoptera). These caddis, cemented to the river rock in their stony homes, face the current to filter organic particulate matter.

On the way down from the reserve our driver managed to destroy his brakes! He did this by coasting 10 km downhill relying only on the brakes to slow our descent. We decided to abandon the vehicle (to the drivers dismay) and find our own way home. The driver got angry and couldn’t understand why we didn’t wish to undertake the 3 hour journey home with him. We managed to find some sort of taxi van which gave us a lift to the main road. I had a look along the side of the road and found a mole cricket! I was pretty excited to find it as I’ve never seen one before. This insect has stout forelimbs and a blunt head modified for digging. Sadly I couldn’t take a picture as my camera batteries were dead. Afa managed to flag a huge lorry down and bartered a price home for us.

On Friday Neil, Laura and myself headed out on a kayak scouting mission from Luhuitou (where the Hainan Adventures base is) and headed East around the peninsula. After 30 minutes we happened across a small bay, the sandy beach was dotted with rocks which penetrated into the gentle surf. We snorkelled here for a while – I was saddened by the large amount of dead coral and coral rubble. The culprits of this were in evidence around the bay – tens of tour boats dumping their anchors onto the reef. Also negligent bathers were trampling all over with their Croc© shoes.

On Friday I got carried away with the coke and rum. Saturday was unproductive as a result!

On Sunday we all headed to Hou Hai to do a beach clean. The rubbish here is appalling. The strand line is heaped with plastics of all types, polystyrene, clothes, fishing line, glass bottles, empty cosmetics containers etc. We concentrated our efforts on a small section, heaping burnable rubbish into piles and separating recyclable materials. By the end of the day the difference was impressive. The fact is, however, that the beach will be littered in no time. The villagers nearby simply dump their rubbish onto the beach. Litter is also dumped indiscriminately by fisherman and owner of leisure craft. China has few tropical beaches within its territory. You would think this would make the Chinese government highly protective over such environments. Sadly on Hainan the only beaches that are looked after are those backed by 5 star resorts. Despite the litter at Hou Hai I decided to snorkel around the rocks to the left of the beach. I was glad to see numerous hermit crabs, oysters and swimmer crabs as well as a few small box fish.

Week 6

On Tuesday the China Climb guys came down. The team consists of Simona (Romanian Manager), Ed (Australian Marine Biologist), Afa (Chinese climber and English speaker), Will (English kayaker and trekker), Mia (Malyasian marketing professional) and Neil (English kayaker). These guys will be here for two weeks, in that time they are going to use their expertise to improve a few of our programmes and to create some new ones. Out of the China Climb team only Afa and Neil are staying indefinitely.

The next day I headed to Riyuewan on a scouting mission to find a suitable location for surfing and camping trips. Whilst walking along the beach we came across the beach tourist section. This area consisted of the usual cheap tourist merchandise. Sadly it also consisted of some “photo opportunities”, i.e. get a photo of yourself in the surf straddling a horse, riding a camel or (shockingly) holding an endangered green turtle. Two Chinese men were parading the beach with a green turtle apiece, the creatures slung under their arms were like so much dead baggage. This disgusted me. On further investigation I found the turtles containment area – a small plastic bucket with some stagnant sea water half filling it. I took the opportunity to take some photos. This put me in a pretty bad mood (as well as Ed!) so we moved on before we did something drastic! The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is a gentle coastal grazer that feeds primarily on sea grasses and alga. This reptile has been endangered for some time now due to over exploitation and loss of nesting grounds as well as mortality from trawls and gill nets. Such an animal plays a crucial role in shallow water ecosystems by keeping algae in check that may otherwise dominate.

We headed along the beach and explored amongst some rocks, to our delight we found some chitons clinging to abandoned oyster shells. We moved on and Ed spotted something amongst the shallows. On closer inspection we could see shell debris around the entrance of a small burrow that had been dug into the coral/sand debris. Naturally we explored the cavity with a small stick, in response an angry mantis shrimp (Order Stomatopoda) popped his front chelae and bulbous compound eyes out from within the tunnel and peered intently at us. I was very happy to see this little guy as he was on my list of “must see animals”. The mantis shrimp is unique. It’s forelimbs are tucked underneath the front of the body, they are under slung weapons of destruction, similar in form to the forelimbs of a preying mantis. When prey nears (or an intruder!) these limbs power out with a force strong enough to cut fish in half. Some shrimps have clubs instead of scythes, such bludgeons have been known to crack aquarium glass…

We left Riyuewan for Hou Hai beach. Here we surfed until dark and had lunch at a local restaurant. After dinner I headed home to e-mail my turtle pics to turtle 911, in the hope that they would seize the animals from the idiots at the tourist centre.

A couple of days later we headed to Wuzhishan on another scouting mission. Wuzhishan (5 finger mountain) is located toward the centre of Hainan Island and towers at 1800 meters. I scouted out some of the villages around the base of the mountain in the hope of finding a suitable place for a cultural trip. After asking some questions around town we headed to a local river for some rafting. Along the river I spied one of the endemic species to Hainan – the Hainan leaf warbler. After this we headed to the nearest town to find a hotel for the night.

On Sunday we scouted out a green tea plantation. To get to the plantation we had to traverse a lake on bamboo rafts. These craft are superb, consisting of 4 or 5 thick bamboo poles bound together by wire. Using a bamboo pole we were rowed across by one of the plantation field hands. The boss took us for a tour showing us how the tea is planted and how which parts of the tea tree are used for what – the blossoms are used for a special tea while the leaves are used for the bulk of the green tea. Wandering the site I spied a huge hawk moth, unfortunately it was too fast and agile for me to secure a photo.

Week 5

A fairly quiet week overall. As we had no kids booked in we spent the week improving our lesson plans and running general errands. On Monday I headed to our local market again. I was disgusted and dismayed upon discovering numerous juvenile reef sharks. The sharks were about 1 meter long at the most. This is inexcusable. Sharks typically have a low fecundity and mature slowly, they are consequently prone to exploitation. Also on display was a large pacific Goliath grouper (only large by today’s standards and in comparison to the numerous tiny fishes at the market). The grouper was surrounded by onlookers taking photos. I estimate the weight of the fish to be approximately 75 kg, this sounds large but when you consider the animal may reach weight of 350 kg and upwards it is actually a runt. This fish is critically endangered due to overexploitation (through spear fishing) and a loss of habitat (juveniles are thought to spend their first few years among mangrove roots). Groupers are often taken before they reach a mature age. The fishing of sharks and groupers is may be short sighted – such animals are apex predators, they are located at the very top of the food web and control the abundance of animals below them. In the absence of such predators there may be a boom in the population of prey species which can dramatically affect the overall “health” of an ecosystem.

After leaving the open market I headed to the local supermarket. I was shocked to find dried shark fins for sale there. I had already seen shark fins for sale prior to this at the open market but finding them in the supermarket is altogether different – it shows that the Chinese are quite happy to promote “shark finning” to support not only the local stall vendor but to supply the supermarket chain. I took some photos of this, however halfway through I was approached by one of the staff and told to stop – perhaps they are aware of the controversy behind this product…

Later on in the week I went for a stroll along our local beach. Towards the end of my walk I happened across a horseshoe crab! Unfortunately the creature was dead and had been so for some time judging by the smell. The animal was perhaps 50 cm across. I was pretty excited so ran back to the house to retrieve my camera. I left the crab to decompose in the gentle swash. The next day my eager to please Chinese house mate had found the animal and kindly deposited outside the house for all to view. At this stage the smell was terrible and I’m amazed that Kathy had the constitution to carry the animal the 200 m or so to the house!

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. Next Monday is important as Hainan Adventures is merging with China Climb – a successful adventure company situated in Guangxi province. Hopefully we will see a few more faces within the company.