Four main forest areas stretching across the New Territories from Tolo Harbor to Lantau Island now total more than 11,500 acres. In ten years some of the lean China pines have shot up to 30 feet high. The overworked forestry staff has been so busy planting trees and keeping a close watch on forest fires that it has had little time for the next stage of the reforestation, which is thinning overcrowded areas. Other complications confront them when a firebreak is cut through the hillside forests; the cutover strip erodes quickly in the summer rainstorms, damaging the tree plantations and sending silt into the reservoirs.
If forestry is the youngest of Hong Kong’s primary industries, fishing is indisputably the oldest, and for many centuries, the largest primary income producer. Until fairly recent times, fishermen were inclined to demonstrate their versatility and supplement their income by piracy. Fast, steel-hulled naval ships with long-range guns have taken much of the lure out of part-time piracy, especially for the crews of slow-moving junks, and the fisher folk have become a law-abiding group. Today they number around 86,000 and catch approximately $10 million worth of fish every year. Not included in their ranks are the keepers of fish ponds, who are regarded as farmers, or those who live on boats but earn their living by hauling cargo, running water-taxis or selling merchandise from their boats.
The fishing people, chiefly Tanka but including other Chinese like the Hoklo and Hakka, are concentrated at Aberdeen and Shau Kei Wan on Hong Kong Island and seven settlements in the New Territories. By environment and preference, they are deeply conservative, disinclined to mix in the affairs of landlubbers. Nevertheless, the irresistible winds of change which have swept through the colony since World War II have shaken them loose from their traditional moorings.
Like the farmers, they were able to free themselves from the iron grip of the laans when the Fish Marketing Organization put the middlemen out of business. The Fish Marketing Organization gave them a fair return on their catch, established cheap credit to improve their boats and equipment, provided boats and trucks to get their fish to the five wholesale markets and founded schools for their children. CARE and other relief organizations came to their aid. The Fisheries Division offered classes in navigation, modern seamanship and boat design, marine engineering and the use of up-to-date fishing equipment, with classes being adapted to the fishermen’s working schedules. A fisheries research unit from Hong Kong University became a regular part of the departmental organization. The 240-ton otter trawler _Cape St. Mary_ cruised the fishing grounds from the Gulf of Tong King, west of Hainan Island, to Taiwan in the east, gathering data on ocean currents, water temperatures and depths and the feeding habits of fish. A fishing master was appointed and careful studies were made of pearl- and edible-oyster culture.