Good news for Google Earth users, as they now have a layer for Marine Protected Areas available from the Google Earth Outreach site. You can download the relevant file here. When you open it and zoom in, you can see an icon marking the locations of marine protected areas. Clicking on an icon gives you more detailed information on the specific location. (You’ll need to download and install Google Earth first).
There are quite a few listed for Hong Kong, but as this is early days, there is very little background information on them yet. Hopefully this will change as the conservation organisations behind this improve the service. But it’s a good start and you can at least see the sizes of the various marine parks established in Hong Kong. For example Hoi Ha Wan is 2.6 sq. km. and Yan Chau Tong is 6.8 sq. km. It does seem to be using a fairly liberal use of the term marine protected area, since Pat Sin Leng and Ma On Shan are both listed, and the last time I climbed them, they were considerably above sea level! But it’s early days.
Once again, you can get the marine protected area layer here.
