Recently, many people visiting the mudflats at Pak Nai and Ha Pak Nai (both in Yuen Long District) to catch razor clams have been using salt sprinkled on the mud to cuase the clams to make themselves visible. Ocean Park Conservation Fund recently did a test to show that sprinkling salt will cause the salinity to rise to unnatural levels affecting the size of sea grass, the survival of horseshoe crab eggs and may also kill any most other organism that are not adapted to surviving such sudden increases in salinity! Mudflats are critically important because of their high level of biodiversity, for example, fiddler crabs mudskippers and Black-faced Spoonbills. The shore of Pak Nai and Ha Pak Nai not only supports 60% of the estimated population of juvenile Chinese horseshoe crabs, Ha Pak Nai also has the largest sea grass bed in Hong Kong, which is classed as “vulnerable”. So please don’t use this method and do your best to protect nature!

Source: hk.on.cc on August 23rd, 2014