We are happy to meet a community influencer who voluntarily contribute his time and effort to cleanup work and awareness talk.
Who is the community influencer that we talked to?
Harry Chan, a diver who is going to be in his 70s in the coming years, is awarded the 2020 HKSAR Honours and Awards Medal of Honour (M.H.) in recognition of dedicated community service. Since eight years ago, he has been working on marine protection like ghost nets, shorelines, beaches, and mangrove tree areas. Ghost Net is a significant part of his work in the sea.
Therefore, he is known as “Ghost Nets Killer.”
Why the ghost net? Ghost net poses harm to life – human life and marine life. As a diver himself, he has experienced tangling in a ghost net that caused him so much trouble to get out of it. You can guess the potential consequences.
He has seen much marine life killed by ghost nets – crabs trapped, coral lack of sunlight to survive, boat anchor caught.
At the retirement age, he has determined to “do good things, spread good works.” The success in talking in seminars over a hundred times, being nominated as an influencer, and having a supportive relationship with the authority drives him more into the cleanup promotion campaigns. It is not because of fame, but because of the works have progress and the message widespreads.
Years ago, nobody around him cared about ghost nets. They would think about why it matters to them. Now, Harry is happy that more and more people come to him, joining their green events, spreading the words for underwater ghost nets issues with their company staff and organization members.
The public relations work takes him a lot of time, but he knows he has to do it. Just do it to make sure the cleanup works continue to the next generations.
Setting an example by personally taking part in an underwater cleanup makes him be friends with a lot of young, enthusiastic divers. Harry truly wishes them to continue the cleanup work in the future when he is unable to work no more.
By: ANewR Consulting Limited, a digital environmental consultant headquartered in Hong Kong since 2008. Our expertise has grown into the context of air and water qualities, noise, green building, waste management, and remediation. With extensive know-how in environmental planning and assessment, feasibility study and policy review, ecological design, monitoring, and audit (EM&A), ANewR has matured to be a leading management consultancy. Standing in the digital transformation reign, ANewR has participated in various environmental digital projects – interactive 3D visualisation, immersive automation virtual environment, Virtual reality, automation system, and monitoring platforms.
(Website: https://anewr.com, LinkedIn: ANewR Consulting Group, Twitter: ANewR – Everyday Newer, YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnpvmxnR9hbNxytSfBdfV8Q/videos)
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