SEA CHANGES
谭云飞Amateur conservationists battle a rising tide of oceanic pollution and public indifference
Dive4love, officially known as the Dapeng Coral Conservation Volunteer Federation, is an NGO dedicated to conserving coral reefs in Shenzhen's Dapeng Bay. Due to industrial pollution and the urbanization of the coastal area, the seas around China's third-largest metropolis have seen their coral coverage plummet from 76 percent to 20 percent over the last 30 years.
Among the NGO'S 2,400 registered volunteers are amateur divers who go on undersea expeditions three times a month, putting their hobby to good use
planting coral and cleaning up maritime trash. Diver “Morgan” Xia Jiaxiang, secretary-general of Dive4love, spoke to TWOC about navigating this delicate ecosystem, and the challenges of drawing attention to a (literally) overlooked crisis in a nation with more than its share of environmental problems.
HOW DID DIVE4LOVE GET STARTED?
Xia: Dive4love was founded in 2012 by a group of Chinese diving fans, who are accustomed to diving in beautiful seas teeming with coral reefs and fish around the world, including Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia; they were appalled by the maritime conditions on their own doorstep— even fish weighing over dozens of kilograms were barely seen. But according to local fishermen, there were sharks and abundant fish weighing over 100 kilograms back in the 1990s.
WHY CORAL? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO SAVE THEM?
Coral reefs are significant to the marine ecosystem—they are an “undersea rainforest.” Though accounting for less than 0.2 percent of the world's marine area, they are habitat to a quarter of all marine life, and shelter infantile marine creatures from predators. They safeguard coasts from the impact of waves and tsunami, prevent erosion; and because they grow by carbon capture, they can help ease climate change. However, compared to
environmental problems on land, such as sandstorms and smog, the degradation of undersea ecology is less well-known yet even more horrifying.
WHAT’S REQUIRED TO RESTORE THIS ECOSYSTEM?
Initially, our work consisted of sending divers to plant coral fragments in Dapeng Bay [and] restoring branches that have been broken off by typhoons or fishing nets. After years of doing this, however, we realized that simply planting coral would not reverse its degeneration, since human activity in the ocean is a major cause: In the 1970s and 80s, or earlier, no one was protecting the coral, but they grew quite well. Therefore, we've decided to also focus on raising awareness and changing people's attitudes towards the sea through our “Dive4love EDU” program, which delivers game-like lessons in maritime knowledge to primary school students and the public. The students are mostly local fishermen's children, who are the closest-related to the sea.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES THAT CHINA FACES WITH REGARD TO MARITIME PROTECTION?
Our nation has generally known and cared little about seas and rivers. To most people, the sea only means beautiful seaside scenery, delicious seafood, and a convenient garbage dump. In 2017, Chinese actress Yuan Li wrote about a town in Yunnan province that was dumping trash into the Nujiang River, since the water will flush everything away. Most Chinese, including fishermen, try to exploit the sea as much as they can without any thought to maintaining its ecology. Only a small minority, like divers, can see the real conditions underwater.
THAT ALL SOUNDS VERY FRUSTRATING. ARE THERE ANY POSITIVE STRIDES BEING MADE?
To date, we have planted over 5,700 corals and cleaned up 601 kilograms of trash from the sea, including over 1,000 meters of abandoned fishing nets. This year, we also hope to create a protected area for coral in Shenzhen, or at least an area restricted to boat traffic, in order to create a good environment for restoring coral.
WHAT WAS THE MOST MEMORABLE INCIDENT FROM YOUR WORK?
In May 2015, a diver posted in his Wechat Moment photos of him holding two coral plants, which are a nationally protected species, and would have taken at least one decade to grow that size. It caused an uproar involving the public, media, and government agencies, and many people contacted me, asking him to be punished for “poaching” the coral. I was also angry, but I thought it's fair to listen to the diver's side, so I managed to get in touch with him. He told me that he did not poach the coral, but picked up coral that was already broken to show his friends who had never seen coral before [ Editor'snote: Broken branches can still be replanted, and should not be removed from the sea floor]. In the end, he paid his fine at the local fishery administration willingly and recorded an apology on the radio, and joined Dive4love together with a group of people from his hometown. It was this incident that really made me think about the effectiveness of public outreach.
TO MOST PEOPLE, THE SEA ONLY MEANS BEAUTIFUL SEASIDE SCENERY, DELICIOUS SEAFOOD, AND A CONVENIENT GARBAGE DUMP
In 1876, the same year that Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the patent for his invention of the telephone, Li Gui, a Ningbo customs officer, became the first Chinese to see the contraption.
Sent by the Qing empire to visit the World’s Fair in Philadelphia, Li glimpsed the ground-breaking device, but didn’t get to use it. That honor was claimed in 1877 by Guo Songtao, the first Qing minister to visit Great Britain, who was invited to try a phone in an electronic appliance factory while his interpreter Zhang Deyi answered from
another set downstairs. “Can you hear it?” began Guo. “Yes,” Zhang replied. “Can you understand me?” “Yes.” “Please count out some numbers.” “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...”
This simple conversation is believed to be the earliest record of Chinese people talking over the telephone. As Guo pointed out in his diary, however, the sound quality was not perfect: “Long sentences were mostly blurred. Only these few words were clear.” Zhang, who later phonetically translated “telephone” as “德律风”( d9l_f8ng), expressed his admiration in his memoir Strange Tales from Over the Ocean: “Upstairs and downstairs, inside or outside the room, people transmit their voices with it, just like talking face to face...whether users are literate or not, with this device, messages can be sent.”
Soon, this magic device began showing up in China. In 1882, Denmark’s Great Northern Telegraph Company founded the first telephone office on Shanghai’s Bund, installing telephones in 25 households in the International Settlement. But most Chinese didn’t embrace the new invention immediately; Guo was even deemed unpatriotic for praising the advanced Western technology, and forced to resign from his position in 1879. Before 1949, the country’s
phone penetration rate was only 0.05 percent, with most sets used by foreign households or government and commercial offices of Western powers.
After the People’s Republic of China was founded, the government decided to upgrade the country’s network. In 1958, the Beijing Telegraph Building was established and soon became the hub of China’s communications industry.
Thereafter, the telephone began to play an increasingly important role in daily life. In 1960, 61 workers in Pinglu county, Shanxi province, fell sick with food poisoning, and needed medicine that was unavailable even in the surrounding cities. Faced with a health crisis, local party secretary Zhang Mingliang phoned Beijing for help.
“Before that, I had never made so many phone calls in my life,” Zhang told the editors of National Album, a book by the Xinhua Agency commemorating China’s 40 years of reform. Fortunately, Zhang’s appeal worked. A PLA air force plane arrived from the capital the next day, carrying a crate of life-saving medicine; all of the workers survived.
Up until the 1990s, though, the telephone was still a luxury for ordinary families. When the Reform and Opening Up policy was inaugurated in 1978, only 0.43 percent of the population had a landline, and most had to go to a public booth to make a call, paying according to the distance they called. In the late 1980s, calling someone over 2,000 kilometers away cost 1.2 RMB per minute—a significant sum. The installation fee for one telephone in a Beijing home was 5,000 RMB in 1990, when the average salary was just 221 RMB per month.
As landlines became more popular, mobile phones also cropped up in wealthy metropolises like Shanghai— bulky contraptions which acquired the nickname “大哥大 (big brother).” In 1987, local media declared Guangzhou’s Xu Feng to be China’s first mobile phone user: It was reported that he paid 20,000 RMB for the privilege, equivalent to the cost of a Toyota tractor at the time.
In 1990s, as the market economy boomed, phones gained popularity among businessmen, who regarded it not only as a communication device but a symbol of wealth. Phone numbers which featured “lucky” digits were especially valuable. In 1993, a Shenyang entrepreneur spent 258,000 RMB to acquire 908888, a number that was usable for less than a decade before 1G networks were phased out in 2001.
Since 1987, the number of China’s mobile users has risen to 1.57 billion. Today, a mobile phone is a necessity, not just for staying in touch but finding directions, taking photos, and placing orders and making purchases. Indeed, some now miss the old days when the phone was only a marvelous instrument for communication. “Days were slower in the past,” modern poet Mu Xin nostalgically notes. “Carriage, horse, and mail did not travel fast. A lifetime was needed just to love one person.”
CHINA’S FIRST MOBILE PHONE USER PAID 20,000 RMB FOR THE PRIVILEGE, THE COST OF A TOYOTA TRACTOR AT THE TIME