Kamy Yeung said she wanted to do more scuba diving. So in 2014, she signed up to be a volunteer diver for a newly launched reef fish survey project in Hong Kong. The experience changed everything she knew about the underwater world. “Like many other Hong Kongers, I was under the impression that we don’t get to see [many fish] in the Hong Kong waters,” Yeung, a secondary school teacher, told Mongabay. “I always thought I had to go overseas to see different kinds of fish. But now I know that we actually have lots of biodiversity in the Hong Kong waters.” The project, a citizen science program known as 114°E Hong Kong Reef Fish Survey and now in its 10th year, is the creation of Stanley Shea, a marine scientist and conservationist who acts as the marine program director for the NGO BLOOM Association Hong Kong. He started the project after recognizing how little had been done to survey reef fish in the island city’s waters, despite the importance of seafood for local consumption and trade. Yvonne Sadovy, a biologist who taught at the University of Hong Kong for many years and once advised Shea on his master’s project, is very familiar with this issue. “Most students only ever had access to dead [fish] in marketplaces, so they didn’t perceive these animals as wildlife in a sense,” Sadovy told Mongabay about her former students. “Now I know that we actually have lots of biodiversity in the Hong Kong waters,”…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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