To celebrate the 61st anniversary of the establishment of the Glorious Motherland...

... I am reposting some photos from the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong Handover that I took in 2007.

Photos 1, 2, 3 & 4: The 'Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Song & Dance Troupe', General Political Department (GPD).

Photos 5 & 6: The 'National Ballet of China' performing a 'model opera' called 'The Red Detachment Of Women', which was first premiered on 26 September 1964. According to China's main ticketing website, "this play shook the entire foundation of bourgeois art".

Photos 7 & 8: The Beijing Military Area Command 'Zhan You Art Troupe' mass choir sing a concert entitled 'The Long March Suite - The Red Army Is Undaunted By The Long Expedition'. Songs include; 'My Dear Motherland', 'The Guerrilla's Song', 'In the Army', 'The Flags Are Fluttering', 'Spring Plough' and 'The Yellow River'.

Happy National Day!

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA HDR PHOTOGRAPHER

Lanterns in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, China, 22 September 2010.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

Hong Kong saw its second ever shark fin protest yesterday.

'Sharkettes' from the Hong Kong Shark Foundation were out in force in Central District, handing out their postcards to the public. The pre-stamped postcards pre-addressed to Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang, are urging him to put a halt to the serving and consumption of shark fin soup at all official government banquets. A Facebook campaign with the same aim has been set up too, which can be joined here.

The younger generation of Chinese were really supportive and accepted the postcards with grace.

People in their 20's and 30's laughed and smiled.

Many of them wanted to pose with the 'sharkettes' and have their photos taken.

I mean, who can but laugh at the sight of an 8ft shark on two legs coming down the street towards you?

The older generation, that's who.

The old guard are certainly not crumbling any time soon.

With all the post cards handed out, it was time to go up the hill to the FCC to attend the press conference.

But not before stopping in front of 'Super Star Seafood Restaurant' for a photo op. Not sure why, but the manager(?) was very pleased to see us, and even came out to say hello!

Back inside the FCC, the press conference was already in full flow.

The press conference line-up: Claire Garner (2L), Director, Hong Kong Shark Foundation; Audrey Eu (L), Guest of Honour, Legislative Council Member and Civic Party leader; Rachel Pang (R), anti-sharkfin Facebook diva (18,800+ fans!) and member of the Hong Kong Shark Foundation; and Rachel Vickerstaff (2R), Director, Hong Kong Shark Foundation. The ladies were jointly-presenting the shark protection postcard campaign. Both the postcard campaign and the Facebook campaign are aiming for Donald Tsang to make a public statement on the issue in his forthcoming Policy Address to Hong Kong's Legislative Council on 13 October 2010 - watch this space.

During the press conference, the delightful Audrey Eu even made reference to a photo by Paul Hilton in our book 'Man & Shark'. The image shows a juvenile oceanic white tip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus) being hauled onto the deck of a Taiwanese longline fishing boat somewhere in the Western Pacific. Audrey's point was that even small sharks are now being targetted, as much of the adult population of sharks is being depleted at such an alarming rate. Unbelievably, even the Environment Bureau and the Agriculture, Food and Conservation Department of the Hong Kong Government have not publicly sworn off shark fin. So far, only the Hong Kong Observatory has.

A Hong Kong tradition: the cheesy group shot with banner at the end of a presser. The full text of the petition and its list of co-signors can be seen here.

One happy reader!

After the press conference concluded, Gary Stokes of Oceanic Love thought it would be a good idea to stage a small protest outside the Central Government Offices (CGO).

It was an ad hoc, but symbolic gesture.

One 'sharkette' tried to ask a favour of a security guard to help her pass a postcard to Donald Tsang.

He was having none of it.

So she decided to go through the proper channels instead, by employing a conveniently located HongKong Post box.

The six-month-pregnant Rachel Vickerstaff also did the same.

And Jan Lai of Greensense unfurled his awesome 'Jaws' poster.

Within five minutes of us being there, the state security apparatus had cranked into gear. Out came that video camera again. It was time for the 'sharkettes' to find their pelagic way home.

For more photos of the days sharktastic activities, go here.

As well as plenty of media coverage in the local Chinese newspapers (which was the main target), the press event gained English language media coverage in the form of radio interviews by the BBC and by RTHK, and photo coverage by Reuters: http://is.gd/fiPOQ http://is.gd/fiPJX http://is.gd/fiPLR

FULL TEXT HERE

按：各位可以到 http://facebook.com/CePaSharkFin 按「讚好/Like」以示支持
另：本運動將在本星期日 ( 2010-09-19 ) 舉行記者招待會公佈詳情

請曾特首在施政報告中暫絕魚翅

致： 行政長官　 曾蔭權先生
致： 環境局局長　 邱騰華先生

請求

特首每年會在十月份發表施政報告。對於今年（2010年）的施政報告，我們作為聯署的環保團體、學者、以及市民，請求特首在今年的施政報告中加入一句承諾──

在未有充份證據證明捕鯊魚業對生態的影響符合可持續發展的原則前，特區政府會暫停在政府宴會上食用魚翅。

其實，我們部份環保團體，曾分別去信特區政府，要求政府公務宴會停吃魚翅。但到目前為止，我們所收到的回覆是「仍在考慮中」。我們希望曾特首能用施政報告這一個機會解决這一問題。

魚翅對環境的破壞

一般相信每年有二千六百萬至七千三百萬條野生鯊魚被殺害，以滿足我們對魚翅湯的口福之慾。多種鯊魚正瀕臨絶種。一九九六年時，全球已經有15種鯊魚 及其近親品種被視為受威脅物種。但在短短十年間，其數字更加急增八倍。鯊魚在海洋生態系統中具有關鍵作用。若鯊魚絶種了，海洋的生態平衡受到破壞，人類的 存亡也會受到影響。

對魚翅問題的關注：本港和海外

香港不少的大機構，如香港大學、匯豐銀行、中華煤氣、恒生銀行、太古地產、佳能香港等，都已作出了不吃魚翅的承諾。香港也有一百八十間以上的中小學，作出了類似的承諾。

在國際上，馬來西亞政府已經在2007年禁止在政府宴會上食魚翅。美國的夏威夷州政府，甚至已經立法在全州的層面全面禁止擁有、買賣、和分發任何魚翅產品。

連香港政府轄下的香港天文台，也已經作出了不吃魚翅的內部指引。

魚翅問題：企業公眾形象的地雷陣

近年不少事件，說明公眾對鯊魚保育和物種存活極其關心。

花旗集團 (Citigroup) 本年七月曾經在香港和星加坡以魚翅作招徠，推廣該銀行的信用咭，結果引來公眾的反感和抗議。該次事件曾被本港報章報導，甚至美國紐約時報和英國金融時報也 曾報導此事。集團最後從善如流，匆匆的把有關的推廣活動取消。其實，類似的事件，近年時有所聞。

這些事件使人們明白，魚翅問題隨時可以引發成為機構的公關大災難，機構應該早予正視。

魚翅乃奢侈品而非必需品

香港政府轄下的瀕危物種資源中心，每年開辦近百場的展覽和講座，接待六千多名訪客，教育市民大眾要保護瀕危物種。但言教遠遠不如身教。

魚翅屬於奢侈品而非必需品。可是它卻對環境做成極大的破壞。這一點，縱使不是證據確鑿，也是相當合理可信的。政府在未有充份證據證明魚翅不會破壞環境之前，以存疑的態度，暫停把公帑花在魚翅湯上，豈不是一個非常合理的公共政策？

Mr. Donald Tsang please say no to shark fin soup
in your policy address

To: Mr. Donald Tsang , Chief Executive
To: Mr. Edward Yau , Secretary for the Environment

Petition

Every October, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong delivers his Policy Address. We, the undersigned green groups, scholars, and concerned citizens, request the insertion of a pledge in his 2010 Policy Address, that

until there is convincing evidence proving the impact of shark fisheries to be compatible with the principles of sustainable development, the HKSAR government will halt the consumption of shark fin soup at all official banquets.

This request follows previous letters from some of the co-signing organizations to the HK SAR Government advocating a similar policy change, for which the answer we could get so far has been that “the matter is being looked into”. We urge Mr. Tsang to take concrete action, through this simple pledge in his Policy Address.

Environmental impact of shark fin soup

Between 26 and 73 million sharks a year are being killed to satisfy the appetite for shark fin soup. Many shark species are now on the brink of extinction. In 1996, 15 shark and related species were considered threatened. Within ten years this number has increased eightfold. Sharks sit at the top of the marine ecosystem and are therefore critical for oceanic health, upon which our own sustainability depends.

Global and local awareness

Many corporations and institutions in Hong Kong have already pledged not to eat shark fin soup. These include the University of Hong Kong, HSBC, the Hong Kong and China Gas Company, Hang Seng Bank, Swire Properties, and Canon Hong Kong. 180 primary and secondary schools have made a similar pledge.

Internationally, since 2007 the Malaysian Government has banned shark fin soup at their official functions. The Hawaii State Government has imposed a blanket ban on the possession, trade and distribution of all shark fin products in the state.

One government department, the Hong Kong Observatory has taken an admirable lead in removing shark fin soup from its menus.

Shark fin soup: a mine field for a corporate’s public image

Recent campaigns have showed the depth of public feeling on this important conservation and sustainability issue.

In July this year, Citigroup ran a credit card promotion in Hong Kong and Singapore featuring shark fin soup. This triggered a public outcry, with the story making its way into local newspapers and even The New York Times and the Financial Times overseas. The bank eventually responded to public pressure and swiftly scrapped the promotion. This is just one example of public opinion demanding that organizations uphold their public commitments to sustainability, with coherent policies around the consumption of shark-fin soup.

The lesson to learn from these incidents is that shark fin soup can easily turn into a public-relations disaster. It is much better to be proactive than to be forced to take action in the face of public pressure and justifiable frustration.

Shark fin soup is a luxury not a necessity

Hong Kong Government currently runs an “Endangered Species Resource Centre”. Every year it organizes almost a hundred exhibitions and seminars, and receives more than 6,000 visitors. All this is done to educate the public about the protection of endangered species. But no exhibition or seminar could be as effective as the Government setting an example.

Shark fin soup is a luxury not a necessity, yet its detrimental environmental impact seems very plausible, if not proven. We urge our government to give the benefit of the doubt to our environment, and to halt spending taxpayers’ money on shark fin soup, until someone can prove that it has no undesirable environmental impact. Isn’t this a sound public policy?

聯署團體、學者、個人

WWF - Hong Kong 世界自然基金會香港分會
環保觸覺 (Green Sense)
綠色和平 Greenpeace
Hong Kong Shark Foundation
Shark Rescue
BLOOM
護鯊行動（香港）(Shark Savers Hong Kong)
香港可持續發展公民議會
Oceanic Love
Yvonne Sadovy, PhD, Professor, University of Hong Kong
Prof. King Ming Chan, Director, Environmental Science Program, CUHK
陳詠娟博士 Wing-Kuen Chan, PhD
鍾姍姍
Alex Hofford (Author, Photographer, “Man & Shark”)
Paul Hilton (Author, Photographer, “Man & Shark”)
張堅庭 Alfred Cheung （導演、編劇、監製、演員、電台／電視節目主持人)
林一峰 Chet Lam（創作歌手）
余若薇 Audrey Eu
葉劉淑儀 Regina Ip ( 立法會議員，匯賢智庫主席 )
陳淑莊 Tanya Chan (大律師、立法會議員）
莫乃光 Charles Mok
范國威 Gary Fan (綠色社區主席 Chairperson, Green Community)
彭凱恩 Rachel Hoi-Yan Pang (「向魚翅說不」運動發起人)
Steve White
蔡海偉 Hoi-Wai Chua
Rico Wong
Kirk Keong Lee ("Save Our Shark From A Bowl Of Soup")
李銳華 Clement Yui-Wah Lee, PhD (「魚翅婚宴。人情七折」運動發起人)

查詢 Enquiries
彭凱恩 Rachel Hoi-Yan Pang -- Email: pangrachel AT gmail DOT com
Claire Garner – Email: claire AT hksharkfoundation DOT org
李銳華 Clement Yui-Wah Lee -- Email: leeyuiwah AT yahoo DOT com

-- 完 --

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG SHARK FIN PHOTOGRAPHER

We are all used to this, the friendly face of government in Hong Kong.

But that doesn't make it any less annoying. All over the world, it's a increasingly common problem for photojournalists to be harrassed by the police and by security guards. Suffering intimidating pressure is, unfortunatley, all in a day's work for us.

Watching you, watching me, state security now comes in many different looks - including yellow nail polish.

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER.

Customs officers in Hong Kong yesterday seized around 400 elephant tusks worth nearly US$1.4m, that had been smuggled in from Tanzania.

(Photo: Hong Kong Customs & Excise Department)

The ivory was found inside two shipping containers marked as dried anchovies, which arrived from Malaysia on Sunday. The two men who went to pick up the consignment at Tsing Yi container terminal on Thursday were arrested. (Report courtesy, RTHK.)

Can someone please tell me, what is it with this town's obsession with consuming endangered wildlife? And where were the tusks headed to? Was their final destination China?

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER

How can this be allowed to happen?

Everyone, by now, knows that bluefin tuna is on the verge of extinction.

According to the United Nations International Union for the Conservation of Nature (UN-IUCN) 'Red List' of endangered species, bluefin tuna is as 'critically endangered' as the panda or the tiger.

So why is it OK to eat it in Hong Kong?

We don't eat panda or tiger, so why do people eat bluefin tuna? Because it is available, yet rare and expensive.

Because you have to be rich to be able to afford it. How can people be so dumb?

A friend suggested to me tonight that it has to do with race. But I really would prefer not to get into all that here...

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA BLUEFIN TUNA PHOTOGRAPHER

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to the Swire Institute Of Marine Science.

Otherwise known by its acronym, SWIMS, the marine biology institute is part of the University of Hong Kong, and is located in probably the most isolated part of Hong Kong.

It's right on the tip of Hong Kong Island's Cape D'Aguilar. To get there you have to pass along a very long and windy single track road with pot holes. Even though the institute is located in a marine reserve, where fishing is prohibited under Hong Kong law, incursions by fishermen are not uncommon.

'X' marks the spot.

I met a Adela Jing Li, a student researcher from Hebei Province in mainland China. Pictured at right in the aquarium is a sea urchin, a nudibranch, a sea cucumber and some soft corals. I think.

Adela is researching the effects of global warming on the seas around Hong Kong, and the marine organisms in it. Those are fish larvae in the petri dish. If I remember correctly, Adela's experiment has something to do with seeing how ever so slight water temperature increases can affect fish, and their reproductive cycles.

Not sure what that has to do with this starfish though.

Adela's fellow student is Stella Wong, who is pictured above reaching into an aquarium full of coral samples. Stella is an ecotoxicology PhD candidate studying "ecotoxicology and risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials, in particular nano metal oxides and carbon nanotubes, on tropical marine organisms". Quite.

Both students are members of the Aquatic Toxicology & Ecological Risk Assessment (ATERA) Research Group.

To get an overview photo of SWIMS, I climbed up a small hill to find a student hostel which is very idyllic, peaceful, and quiet. And cheap too at HK$60 a night for HKU students. Also on the hill is Hong Kong's oldest lighthouse which dates back to colonial days when the territory was a juicy target for pirates.

Such a beautiful spot, I hope I can return to SWIMS soon!

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA MARINE BIOLOGY LIGHTHOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER

Finally. A positive fishy story from Hong Kong! This time from the Hong Kong Food Expo.

This lady from Japanese company Tosakatsuo Suisan Co. Ltd is holding a tray of delicious 'pole-and-line' wild-caught skipjack tuna sashimi. For the unfamiliar, 'pole-and-line' fishing is a traditional, selective, therefore more sustainable, way of fishing for tuna. Only tuna of a certain size are caught, leaving juveniles to grow up to spawning age, and thus replenish future stock. Unlike long-line fisheries, it actually gives the fish a fair chance and is not greedy. In case you were wondering, that's 'pole-and-line' fishing happening on TV in the background of the photo.

Industrial 'long-line' tuna fisheries are essentially to blame for the global collapse in tuna stocks. This includes the critically endangered bluefin tuna, and the yellowfin tuna, commonly eaten as sashimi, which is also heavily over-fished. Long-line tuna fishing boats have also been heavily criticized by environmentalists for their incidental by-catch of sharks, dolphins, turtles and seabirds. The bottom line is long-line fisheries are causing havoc with the world's marine eco-systems.

And here's a photo taken from the company's website of what 'pole-and-line' fishing looks like:-

In 2009, the Marine Stewardship Council awarded Tosakatsuo Suisan full environmental certification for having achieved sustainable and well-managed fisheries, making them the world's first skipjack tuna fishery to do so. Here's an MSC video all about it:-

Part of the reason I'm posting this is to prove that I'm not anti-Japanese, as has been alleged by a few rabid and anonymous commentors on my Japan's Shark Fin Capital post last month. I even had a death threat from someone called 01kakusan on my YouTube page. I'm not anti-Japanese, I just took some highly emotionally-charged photos in Japan, and then put them online. I let the viewer decide.

No. What Tosakatsuo Suisan are doing is commendable... and they are Japanese.

(For readers in Hong Kong: Pole-and-line caught tuna is available in 'Park n Shop', just look out for the 'Wild Planet' brand.)

But now back to the dodgy stuff...

Unsurprisingly, abalone, (latin genus name: 'haliotis', Chinese name: 鮑魚 'bao yu'), is on sale at the Hong Kong Food Expo. Abalone consumption is controversial because of the widespread depletion of global stocks by poachers and smugglers, many of whom have links to Chinese organized-crime syndicates.

Some larger species of abalone have been so heavily exploited for food that many populations are now severely threatened. That includes the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

South Africa even listed abalone on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix III in 2007, and two species of abalone are listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as 'Endangered' and 'Critically Endangered'.

But no post about seafood (un)sustainability in Hong Kong would be complete without shark fin.

The trade goes on.

According to a Friday report in the Hong Kong Standard, a one metre high shark fin was on display at the Food Expo on Thursday, but I didn't see it anywhere today. It was probably from a whale shark, but I would imagine someone told them that having it around wasn't cool. That is, given the current and growing anti-shark fin sentiment in the city.

This woman was certainly not too keen on me shooting her nice little collection of juvenile shark fins.

I showed her my press pass, and she seemed mad as I continued shooting unharassed.

And let's not forget where all this stuff comes from. Here's an interview with Randall Auraz, from Pretoma, whose friend captured the now (in)famous footage of the live blue shark being finned in Costa Rican waters, that appears at the end of our 'Man & Shark' short movie...

ALEX HOFFORD : HONG KONG CHINA PHOTOGRAPHER