Our guest, Mr. Jim, guest of President Peter Barrett, Dr. Chan and Mr. Mike Jackson, guests of Dr. David Anderson, Visiting Rotarian, PP Robert Fung and Mr. Jack Bain, as the guests of IPP Bernie Ting, will become our members very soon.

Our President Peter Barrett announced that the draft of By-Law has been prepared by our VP Tobias Doeringer, and Honorary Secretary Thomas will assist in drafting the Constitution.  Both of the By-Law and the Constitution will be reviewed and obtained the approval on the Board Meeting on 21^st August 03 on 6:00p.m. (before our dinner meeting). The meeting Leprosy Sub-committee was held on 11^th August 03.  It was a successful and productive meeting that compromises and decisions had been made to start the construction work as soon as possible.

A talk given by a Chinese scholar, who had set up 100 hospitals in China by fund raising and his own savings, will be held at the FCC on 20^th August at 6:00pm. 44^th District Conference will be held on 15^th & 16^th November 03, we would like to reserve a table for about 10 members to attend the conference.

After the announcements of the President and the main course of the lunch had been finished, our Rtn Suzanne Gendron introduced the guest speaker today, Mr. Keith Wilson of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) of Hong Kong.  Before the start of the talk, Rtn Suzanne briefly talked about the Chinese white dolphin which was rescued in Sai Kung by the AFCD and the Ocean Park and accommodated and looked after by the Ocean Park days ago.  The dolphin was a female and really old, suffering from serious skin problems and could not swim when she arrived at the Ocean Park.  Although her health situation was getting better, a heart attack suddenly brought her to death at the end.

Mr. Keith Wilson started his talk about “Artificial Reef in Hong Kong”.  He mentioned that as threatened by over fishing, foreshore and seabed developments, dumping, dredging, reclamation and water pollution, marine resources in Hong Kong have been declining in recent years.  The Government of Hong Kong SAR announced using HK$108 million on the Artificial Reef Project in order to enhance local marine resources, to rehabilitate degraded habitats, to protect spawning and nursery grounds, and marine protected areas, and to enhance habitat quality in open seabed areas.

Keith indicated that vessels, concrete, quarry rock, and tyre reefs can be used as the artificial reefs.  The project started in 1998 in the marine parks, finding settlement of large number of juvenile fish in the artificial reef area.  The total number of fish species encountered rose steadily over the years and some new species were still being found.  Based on the results of Reef Check in 2001, they firstly found coral trout in Hong Kong.  This further proved the success of the artificial reef project in supporting a wider variety of fish species in the Hong Kong waters than before.

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