Heads Above Water

Will a bigger beach and a safer fishhook help bring Hong Kong’s disappearing green turtles back?

- Zabrina Lo

On October 10, Lam, a green turtle found tangled in a fishing net in Lam Tsuen River in Tai Po, was rushed to Ocean Park’s rescue centre within the amusement park’s Aberdeen campus. An X-ray scan showed a fishhook puncturing its esophagus. There was trauma to its shell. Part of its left fin was marked with a deep, v-shaped cut. Lam passed away 19 days later from the injuries.

“We did a post-mortem exam and the pathologist found some abnormal things inside the body,” says Ocean Park vet Sarah Churgin, who was still waiting for an autopsy report a week after Lam’s death when we interviewed her at the centre. Lam was Ocean Park’s fifth rescued green turtle this year and one of the victims of a series of mysterious deaths, including that of a juvenile green turtle spotted by beachgoers on October 7 at a Cheung Chau beach and another a week later at Gemini Beach in Sham Tseng, prompting questions about what is killing Hong Kong’s green turtles and what the city should be doing to protect them.

“The organs [of the Cheung Chau and Sham Tseng turtles] were too autolysed [decomposed] for us to tell the exact age and cause of death,” says Brian Kot, the head of the Aquatic Animals Virtopsy Lab at the City University of Hong Kong, who was called in along with the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) to examine the turtles. The contents found in the Sham Tseng turtle’s intestines are now kept in two bottles in Kot’s lab: plastic gloves, plastic bags, food wraps, drinks packaging and ropes.