Sea Turtle Conservation Outreach

Our commitment to marine conservation extends beyond academic research—we actively bridge scientific discovery with public engagement. Since 2025, we organized and co-hosted a series of outreach seminars and interactive workshops to empower citizen scientists, recreational divers, and the general public to protect sea turtles in Hong Kong waters.

• Sea Turtle Workshop: From Nest to Shore (June 2025): Co-organized with the Hong Kong Maritime Museum to celebrate World Sea Turtle Day, this lecture hall-packed workshop explored sea turtle ecology, anatomical adaptations, global threats, and conservation cultural traditions with regional experts from China Mainland, Taiwan, and South Korea. We introduced our eSeaAnimals mobile app, inviting over 100 attendees to log real-time sightings.

• Sea Turtle Health & Stranding Science Workshop (April 2026): Tailored for local diving enthusiasts, this interactive session hosted at dive shop XIX Diving focused on monitoring sea turtle hotspots, recognizing common anthropogenic hazards, and training divers on official stranding reporting protocols.

• Sea Turtle Health & Stranding Science Workshop 2 (August 2026): Hosted at CityUHK, the seminar highlighted health assessment techniques and real-time sighting response on sea turtles. Demonstrating the immediate impact of citizen science, a participant applied the event's reporting guidelines the very next day to report an entangled green sea turtle in Sai Kung, enabling timely postmortem investigation which confirmed ghost net entanglement as an alarming threat to marine megafauna.

• Biodiversity Workshops (monthly) and Science in the Public Service 2026 (August 2026): In partnership with the Hong Kong Science Museum, we delivered Biodiversity Workshops ("Sea Turtle Health Check") and a public lecture ("Marine CSI 2.0"), giving attendees a firsthand look at imaging techniques and local biodiversity conservation.

Every citizen report directly feeds into our virtopsy-led aquatic animal health assessment, translating public vigilance into actionable scientific evidence. We extend our gratitude to our partners—the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, the Hong Kong Science Museum, the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, XIX Diving—and to every community member joining us in safeguarding our ocean health.