Although many people do not see the ocean every day, it covers 71% of the Earth’s surface. It plays an important role in people’s lives, and especially for Hong Kong people.

With a total coastline of 456 kilometers surrounding the city, Hong Kong people take advantage of it through watersports, such as kayaking and snorkeling. 

However, human activities cause significant problems to the ocean ecology. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature – Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government collects 15,000 tons of waste per year in its waters. Meanwhile, the habitats of some creatures have been ruined by human activities alongside the coastline. 

Luckily, there are groups of experts dedicated to protecting the environment with ground-breaking technology. Samyuktha Sriram is one of them.

Hong Kong Popular Tourism Spots near Sea

Sriram works as the head of business development and marketing at Clearbot, a high-tech startup in Hong Kong, whose goal is to protect the environment.

“Clearbot is an electric autonomous robot that we have created and allows us to do everything from pollution recovery to surveillance,” Sriram said. “So, we basically came up with the solution to make marine tasks more environmentally friendly and smarter.”

The AI-generated robots, which look like small motorboats, have already been used in multiple places in Hong Kong and India, she added.

The AI bot is cleaning the water. Courtesy of Clearbot.

However, there were some limitations to this tool, as it could only collect certain kinds of trash, like bottles, that could fit within the width of the entry of the board.

“But all over this year, we would actually be increasing that to make a bigger bot that is able to carry a lot more than previously,” she said. “Now it is able to collect 200 kg at one time.”

 However, this material has a disadvantage.

“The material is not as sturdy as concrete,” Lange said. “So on the site in Kok Pu village, no one can really control how visitors treat the stools. So some of the stools broke over time. However as the material is made of soil, the broken pieces will eventually erode over time and turn into soil again and won’t harm the environment.

In the tidal zones, creatures must deal with different situations within a day. 3D printing terracotta could help creatures cope with these situations, like helping them escape from predators. Its design was inspired by Chinese ceramic stools. 

“If you go and see that terracotta, you will find that many crabs live there,” he said. 

“The 3D printing technique works beautifully for small-scale projects like this,” he said. “But when civil engineers worked on projects of coastline protection, the magnitudes of that are much bigger than this.”

The use of this technology for other projects in larger regions has not been sufficient on its own, he said.

“The effective way to handle the protection of the habitats is to use the mixed techniques that could work best in different civil engineering projects,” he added. 

While the situation of ocean ecology is getting better and better in Kuk Po, Wang said he thinks more actions should be taken by other people if they want to protect Hong Kong’s ocean ecology as a whole.

As for what the government has done to protect water environments, Sriram said the government worked with Clearbot to do pollution recovery.

“We do weed removal,” she said. “Those are invasive plants that could harm the local ecosystems.”

But since there are many important things that should be addressed, “it is not the government’s priority to protect the ocean environment,” Wang said.

At the moment, Wang added that the government is giving priority to building more houses in order to solve the housing crisis for Hong Kong’s younger generation.

“I care about environmental issues, and I am doing what I can do. That is just a tiny village. It is not realistic for me to help Hong Kong with all issues.”                                                     – Wang Weijen