Greetings, this is Morgan living in Yung Shue Ha Village near Tung O. Yesterday my neighbour Eric sent me a photo capturing the oil spill scene at Shek Pai Wan. And I've seen the earlier post here regarding the digging.

Does anyone know about it?
I'm new to Lamma Island, but I really worry and concern about the ecology here as many lives living in this area.
It seems that the Lamma community is able to gather information, news about new development and people/department to contact, I'm just wondering how can my neighbour and I could help as we live closed to this area and easier to report if anything happened. Thank you.

Apple Daily has the story now

http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/ ... 4/18309986

A quick and dirty Google Translate:

Grabbing just one photo from the Apple Daily story says it all...

This is the most frequently cleaned beach and also the most beautiful beach in South Lamma. It might take years for the oil on and in-between the rocks to decompose as it's almost impossible to clean, much harder than digging up and carting off the beach sand which they did.

I might have a look at it myself this weekend, in-between the YMCA Camp Grand Opening in the ex-Quarry and the Sok Kwu Wan dragonboat races.

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Well, the Baroque people will be very happy.

According to the government:

A government spokesman said today (June 24) that the Marine Department received a report in the morning of June 21 and found an oil slick covering approximately 10 metres x 15m in waters off Tung O Wan, Lamma Island, and a 100m x 15m oil slick at the Tung O Wan beach area. The Marine Department immediately tasked its staff with cleaning up the oil slick at sea, and alerted relevant departments.

Small oil patches were found and cleaned up at waters off Tung O Wan by Marine Department staff on June 22 and 23. As at this afternoon, no other oil slicks had been found at adjacent waters and shorelines. The Marine Department is now following up with the source of the oil slicks and the oil sample collected will be sent to the Government Laboratory for analysis.

The Government is keeping a close watch for any impact of the oil spill incident at Tung O Wan on the marine ecology. Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) staff patrolled the waters around Lamma Island including Sok Kwu Wan, Yung Shue Wan, Tung O Wan and Sham Wan over the weekend. Except at Tung O Wan, no signs of an oil spill were observed at the other sites, including the coastal waters and the beach at Sham Wan. Sham Wan is Hong Kong's only known primary nesting site for green turtles, and consequently is designated as a restricted area during the nesting season, which lasts from June to October each year. Those without permits will not be allowed to enter the area. The AFCD will continue to monitor the situation.

The AFCD also contacted mariculturist representatives at the Sok Kwu Wan and Lo Tik Wan fish culture zones. No irregularities in relation to the incident have been reported by the mariculturists so far.

Since the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) was notified, the department has sent staff to clear the sand contaminated by the oil spill at the beach at Tung O Wan in the past few days. As at today, about 600 bags of sand have been collected for disposal by the Marine Department. The FEHD will continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action.

The Government will continue its inter-departmental monitoring operations.

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I was just down at HSY for my regular swim, no signs of oil there.

except for your greasy body funk

Oh boy, you really crack us up with your hilarious comments. Subtle wit like this is the sign of true genius - if only all posters on this forum were like you.

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Finally, the Govt, issues a very short release about this issue, after it's been in some of the majn newspapers already, some of them days ago:

http://www.news.gov.hk/en/categories/environment/html/2013/06/20130624_180438.shtml

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LG, I posted the larger government PR above, fwiw.

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Stanley Chan of Lamma Corner on RTHK Radio 3 right now, about the oil spill in Shek Pai Wan...

According to Govt., no idea yet where it came from. The polluted sands have been removed, but not the oily, difficult-to-clean rocks.

It might take a while before Lammaites and visitors feel safe to go swimming on this stunning beach again. Some of my Shek Pai Wan photos from my archive:

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The water will be safe for humans very quickly.
But the plants and animals that live in it will be suffering for a long time.

Sludge will sink into the sand and be exposed periodically, so you get sticky oil on your feet.

More photos from Stanley Chan:

"You can find the oil stick on the boulder rock and it looks really difficult to clean up.

The map with the red spot are the oil rocky area, it is more easy to go there during the low tide.

Under the hard work of the FEHD in those few days, the oil on the sandy beach is under control, but still needs more work for a total clean up.

Probably I will go again on Friday with the media and if the weather is good, I might walk around the coastline to Sham Wan for a full check."

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Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum, my excuses if I deviate from the style of posting. I am also a new Hong Kong resident.

July 14th 2013, my girlfriend and I took a little hike and sadly witnessed the oil spill, took some pictures, oil, booms and animal samples. I wrote a little blog post about it here : http://www.cesarharada.com/lamma-island-oil-spill-needs-more-research-cleaning/
If you haven't been to the site yourself, watch the video : http://youtu.be/9zncIy8exLQ

I am proposing to push the research further and build a case to complete cleaning. We would use simple environmental science techniques that everyone can do with a bit of guidance :

1. Analyse water samples with simple spectrography
2. Aerial photography, using helium balloons and modified digital camera
3. Underwater photography, using simple waterproof camera.
4. Study sea life that may suffer most from oil pollutions (crabs, shells, fishes, algaes / respiratory, digestive, reproductive system). We could also interrogate local residents / anyone exposed to oil / dispersant to find out if human health is potentially at risk.

All the techniques above are low-tech, super low-cost and safe for health. Combined, they provide a very complete and compelling documentation for the 2013 Lamma Island oil spill. We can use this documentation to encourage further clean up operations, so eventually people can come back to swim, so you can eat the fish from the area without worrying of contamination.

We would perform this work over a couple of week ends, share our findings online as we work, and publish a final report / paper with observations, recommendations to clean up either mechanically, chemically or biologically (yes some microbes do eat oil).

>> So, who would like to give hand of data collection? That would be flying balloons, taking pictures underwater, assembling them on the computer, doing some maths, some physics, dissecting some animals, looking at them on the microscope, building a DIY spectrograph, researching online oil spill cleaning solutions... It would be a great community project for everyone, also really exciting for Environmental Science students.

Just to give a bit of background about me... I used to work at MIT (Boston USA) and moved to Gulf of Mexico to work on the clean up of the BP oil spill. I lived there for about 2 years studying the oil spill and developing new technologies to clean up future oil spills - in particular Autonomous Sailing robots to detect and clean up oil spills. I explain it here : http://ted.com/talks/lang/en/cesar_harada_a_novel_idea_for_cleaning_up_oil_spills.html
I am in Honk Kong to manufacture these robots at industrial scale. I live in the New Territories.

I'm interested in your feedback, and If you want to collaboratie, please get in touch : contact@protei.org

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Hi Cesar, I'm with you on this. Can juggle photos and massacre animals but with the latter I wouldn't really know what I'm doing, can look at them in the microscope, too, but again... "What's that disgusting looking thing on the right? Oh, my finger?"

But I'm good with digital stuff so I'll email you. Leave the dissecting and eyeing to others.

Regarding the aerial photography, wasn't there someone with a drone? Balloons are so out!

We've got lots of aerial drone and model plane videos and photos of Shek Pai Wan on YouTube, by Joe the Quadrocopter Aviator:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lammajoeyu

It was a former favourite flying spot of his, but nowadays he's spotted more frequently on and off Power Station Beach.

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Update video of the cleaning of the Shek Pai Wan Oil Spill :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vED2jrKSkg

and walking around the oily rocks :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bbqbyEOvpo

Thank you all for all those who came for the cleaning !

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