email correspondence continued, with this from Charlie Frew:
“Lawrence,
Many thanks for forwarding me the response from your engineering colleague. Whilst I agree with some of the responses I still fear that a lot more work needs to be carried out into the deployment of xx tyres as ARs.
Yes Hong Kong’s seafloor is in a state of oblivion, no thanks to trawlers – but carpeting the bottom with tyres may not necessarily be much better.
We have not had a direct hit with a serious typhoon in many years, the big one is yet to come, dynamiting has more or less been stamped out from Mirs Bay (HK side at least) and Anti trawling devices are usually ships/ or derelict dolphins – much heavier obstructions. Tyre nodules are purely fish habitats. So none of these impacts have really been tested on tyre ARs in Hong Kong.
We should also look at the fisheries management of the Tyre ARs – currently licenses are given out to indigenous fishermen who are free to fish in and around ARs. Are we not pulling in fish stocks to a centralised location for them to be fished quicker? I strongly believe that more work needs to be done by AFCD into this issue and further research into natural habitat verses ARs. West Kowloon and Victoria Harbour are not particularly good examples…..as these are beyond any form of short/long term remedial action. The east coast of Hong Kong is where we should be looking.
Maybe using some of the tyres is an obvious solution and yes AFCD should continue to monitor the ARs and draw comparisons. I really think they have done some tremendous work so far.
I for one would like to see more ARs in Port Shelter, esp since they are due to bring in the trawling ban. Sink some tyre ARs in certain locales and we will have a very productive region.
But I am just throwing caution to the wind as the number of tyres that need disposing off could make the seafloor of HK look like a scene from NT; but in our case it is out of sight-out of mind.
CF”