The latter too being the click here reason they were established as Hong Kong’s first marine reserve in 1995. Working on the shore one day (with a permit to do so, I hasten to add), a man and his family came onto the reserve’s shores from the adjacent village of Hok Tsui but with a shovel. ‘Strange’ I thought! But then, to my astonishment, the man began shovelling all the barnacles (Tetraclita), oysters (Saccostrea), mussel’s (Septifer) and gastropods (Thais) off the reserve’s rock platforms while his wife and two kids loaded them into plastic bags. Incensed, as the institute’s director, I ordered him off the reserve and University land. He told me to ‘f∗∗∗

off’, my understanding of Cantonese being better than Putunghua, as ‘he had every right to do what he was doing’ he said. At that, I simply DZNeP chemical structure told him I was calling the local police whose dedicated number I had. Seeing how serious I was, he left, grumbling and muttering dark threats. Once again, I had seen for myself, but this time in the context of an affluent society, how things are not, ecologically, what they seem. Once again, I jump forward but, this time, almost twenty years.

Post-retirement I have returned to my roots and the simple pleasures of children and grandchildren. Occasionally I go with them to one of the local eco-farms and see the lambs being suckled, cows milked, chickens fed, eggs collected and goats petted. On sunny days too, we join local holidaymakers crab-fishing from the path along the side of my local river – the Arun. In fact, it is a pastime that has become almost a tradition for Littlehampton with even an annual public contest. One summer day, sitting enjoying the early

morning peace of the river, with a cup of coffee nearby and newspaper in hand (London’s Metro, 27 June 2014), I read how at Urease the Japanese whaling village of Minamiboso, local whalers, having just killed a Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei) (whaling in Antarctica having been banned in March 2014 [The Times, 2 June 2007] by the International Whaling Commission), were demonstrating to a group of primary school children how to flense it. Followed by how to fry and eat the butchered pieces of meat. In 1965, I was invited to visit a whaling factory on the island of Pico in the Açores where a sperm whale (Physter macrocephalus) was being processed and the stench was just overpoweringly awful. The industry died a death in 1987 following virtually unanimous local condemnation of the practice. After that experience, I could simply never allow my own children to watch a whale being butchered. But, I also remember visiting the old whaling station (now a museum) at Albany in Western Australia in the late 1990s and seeing members of a Japanese tour group being physically sick as the local guide showed grainy, 1950s, film-images of a whale being flensed.