words rachel mok

Fish farms are becoming resorts as their owners try to make ends meet

Hong Kong took a century to transform from a fishing village to Asia’s World City but, although Hong Kongers are now most likely to be found in skyscrapers, a portion of our population still lives in floating homes – and some of those water dwellers are fish farmers. According to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), in 2007 the local fish-farming industry produced 3,658 tonnes of fish, valued at $140 million. The numbers look huge, but in truth many fish farms have been transformed into resorts where visitors can fish, enjoy barbecues, play mahjong or sing karaoke. We talked to some fish farmers that hang onto – or just cannot afford to get out of – their age-old business.

It takes less than 30 minutes to reach Po Toi O, south of Clear Water Bay, from Po Lam. But once I get off the minibus – the only public transport that connects the village to the urban area – it feels like a completely different world. The village is quiet, doors to houses are open and I can see people dining and playing mahjong. Rafts are lined side by side along the bay but I hardly see any fish farmers at work. At least not until I am through the village and at the pier, where Mr Chan is just lighting a cigarette as he takes a break.

As it is one of the 26 fish-culture zones in Hong Kong, why is Po Toi O so quiet, I wonder. Mr Chan says the number of fish farms has dropped dramatically in recently years, because “they can’t make money out of it”. The number peaked at 60 in the past but now there are only 38, many inactive. “The weather is cold right now, not good for fish anyway,” says the man who raised five children on the back of this dying business. “And we still have not recovered from the red tide last year.”

Mr Chan was born and raised in Po Toi O, his parents also working in the marine industry. He recalls the best time was some 20 years ago, when boats would sail to the village, weighed down with fish, which sold for “several hundred thousands” in some good years. “We used to pool all our money and buy 30 to 40 dan (a dan is 50kg) of fry to raise,” he says. “They cost $500,000 to $600,000!”

Fry now mainly come from the Chinese Mainland, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines and Indonesia. But buying fry is only the first step of the work. Every morning a fish farmer needs to wake up at around 5am to feed the fish but to Mr Chan one thing is more uncomfortable than waking up before the sun – cleaning the nets. “There are a lot of shellfish sticking to the net so from time to time I have to get rid of them all,” he explains, pointing at shellfish attached to the pier. “Otherwise my fish will crash into them and may die. I did it this morning and it was so tiring.”

“The government will come on an inspection from time to time and rail at us if our rafts are a little bit larger than they should be,” he says, after I ask if I could board the raft to take a look. He starts to worry that I am from the AFCD. I ask, if business is so difficult – he says his income is as little as $1,000 in a bad month – why isn’t this beautiful village transformed to a resort, a change which some owners claim has trebled their income? “The licence is expensive, we can’t afford that!” says Mr Chan, and so he rents out his boats to visitors during the weekend for $120 a day. He tows visitors out to sea with his motorboat and they call him to pick them up when they are ready to come back. “It is just $120... so cheap...”

While Mr Chan didn’t try to transform his business, some did. Seventy-seven-year-old Sing Gor has been living in Sok Kwu Wan at Lamma Island since 1964 and has been a fish farmer from the beginning. Not surprisingly, he finds the AFCD annoying sometimes as well. “I haven’t wanted to keep fish for a long time,” he smiles bitterly. “But if the government comes and sees there are no fish, they will take away my licence – so I have to keep some.”

He quit a job as a lifeguard – he had seen too many people drown and worried he would have to save his own children someday – and turned to fish farming, as that was what his parents did. “When I was 12, I was already working and sometimes I shouldered 20kg to the market to sell,” he recalls. That was when Hong Kong was still occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War. “I walked without shoes and passed five guards. They always took the two biggest fish.”

The ’70s and into the ’80s was a golden era. “There were so many bookings I didn’t have to worry about sales at all,” he says. “One grouper I had raised for almost five years weighed in at more than 20kg... and some people didn’t sell their fish, even if it was more than 50kg.” Sing Gor is familiar with different kinds of seafood and that is probably why he is, according to some restaurant owners, the best person to be the tour guide in the Lamma Fisherfolk’s Village, which welcomes tourists worldwide to relive the good old days of the floating community. “Fish farming is too much hard work and I couldn't make much money,” he explains. “But still I wanted something to do to pass the time.” From fish farmer to tour guide – it’s the sort of evolution the previous generation has had to go through to be part of 21st century prosperity.