During the National Day holiday, the popularity of sea-going tourism to get close to nature was high. However, a reporter's investigation in Sanya and Lingshui, Hainan, found that many commercial sea-going tourists invaded mangrove protected areas, banned fishing gear "extreme household nets" were overflowing, and benthic organisms were frequently exploited. The reporter came to investigate.
Reporters saw on online platforms such as Douyin, Ctrip, and Xiaohongshu that massive overseas travel guides and live broadcasts were intensively pushed to attract tourists, and some merchants had thousands of online reviews.
As a tourist, the reporter randomly contacted a Sanya "Sea Racing Team" club and followed the shuttle bus to Tielugang Mangrove Nature Reserve. On the way, he passed through an iron gate equipped with a high-voltage power grid and directly entered the core tidal flat of the reserve.
A dozen tourists, led by coaches, randomly picked up fish, shrimp and shellfish in the mangrove wetland. Merchants also launched a high-priced floor cage project of 888 yuan, claiming to be the "ceiling" of hydrophilic tourism. The reporter decided to find out.
The next night, the speedboat carried tourists and reporters through the mangroves. The coach pointed to the mineral water bottle on the sea surface to indicate the ground cage marking point.
The hundred-meter-long ground cage was all pulled up and filled with the entire speedboat. The instructor sorts the catch. The reporter saw that apart from a small number of flower crabs and puffer fish, the vast majority of the cages were juvenile fish and shrimps less than the size of a finger.
Coach: We also have a big ship on it, with at least 2,000 cages.
According to the reporter's rough statistics, this club alone received more than 100 tourists heading to sea that day.
In Lingshui County, which is close to Sanya, the reporter saw that more than ten merchants set up stalls in the streets along the Lingshui Mangrove National Wetland Park, openly soliciting tourists to carry out paid projects such as traveling to the sea and pulling cages.
Roadside warning signs clearly delineate ecological protection red lines and clearly prohibit the harvesting of benthic organisms in the protected areas, but businesses continue to operate as usual.
Where does supervision get stuck? The reporter called the Lingshui County Forestry Bureau.
Staff from Lingshui County Forestry Bureau: Driving to the sea will destroy some seagrass beds and damage the ecological environment. The ground cage is indeed damaged, and the soil must be dug and the soil layer disturbed. This situation is a bit troublesome. But because of economic interests, it is difficult for us to deal with it, and later it becomes a guerrilla war. When we patrol, we should restrain ourselves. If we don't patrol, they will start doing it again.
During further investigation, the reporter followed the vendor's guidance and came to the location of the Tielugang mangrove wetland protection and restoration project. The project was just completed in September this year, with a full set of management and protection facilities such as patrol plank roads, protection management stations, bird watching spots, and patrol docks. But when I walked into the patrol dock, I saw a shocking sight: more than a dozen work boats were densely packed with cages.
The mesh of the ground cage is too thin for the reporter's index finger to reach through. After measuring with a measuring tool, the mesh distance is only about 6.5 mm.
It is understood that the ground cage is a transitional fishing gear specified by the country. The standard mesh size of the ground cage used in permitted sea areas shall not be less than 25 mm. Such fine ground cages with extremely small meshes and capable of catching both large and small fishes are known as "extreme nets" because they are extremely destructive to fishery resources. Hainan Province has listed ground cages as prohibited fishing gear.
In the Tielugang Mangrove Nature Reserve, the reporter saw fishermen leaning over to pick up snails on the tidal flats after low tide. The plastic buckets around them were already filled with snails. In the mangrove planting area that is being restored on the other side of the tidal flat, there are villagers digging for sandworms with long sticks and shovels. These actions all take place within the protected area. What is even more worrying is that the leaves of this mangrove forest, which has just completed systematic restoration, have turned yellow in large areas.
Staff: The survival rate is 50% to 60%. The cages placed in the reserve are currently unattended and cannot be controlled.
Experts point out that picking up benthic organisms such as snails and hermit crabs in mangrove reserves will not only aggravate pests and diseases, but also expose the roots of mangroves, causing irreversible damage to ecological restoration results.
Zhang Mingxiang, professor at Beijing Forestry University and secretary-general of the Nature Reserve Research Center of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration: Benthic organisms are the natural enemies of many mangrove pests. After they are dug up and trapped in large numbers, they will intensify some pests and diseases in the mangroves, such as water lice. Furthermore, the roots of the mangroves will be exposed, leading to the death or poor growth of the mangroves.
