“My main goal is to keep and protect as much of the amazing Hong Kong environment as possible.” – why you should refuse to eat in restaurants that offer shark fin and why Hong Kong is more than big finance.

Charles Frew, Director, Asiatic Marine, Hong Kong, P. R. China

“One of our major success stories in the last few months was to force newly opened Disney World Hong Kong to take shark fins from their menu,” – Charles told us when we met him in Hong Kong. It is still common to find this dish as a delicacy on many menus – especially for wed-dings -, although it leads to killing of endangered sharks, cutting off their fins and thro-wing away the rest.
Through diving with sharks, producing films about them and engaging in intensive media work, Charles tries to correct the wrong image of sharks and create more re-spect for their life: “Sharks are not killing machines, but very fascinating sea animals important for the balance of nature. This is what we have seen hundreds of times when diving with these terrific animals.”
Apart from fighting for sharks, Charles Frew is engaged in marine consulting for governments and private companies, he owns one of the best underwater filming companies in Asia and enjoys organizing marine safaris, diving adven-tures and everything that is connected to marine live in a positive way.

Enjoy reading about some of his thoughts in the selected quotations below and you may be able to read more about his experiences and activities under and above water in our book “MyImpact”.

Charles Frew’s selected quotations:
“Finance is first in Hong Kong; environment does not come as priority for another while. The situation is not too good; the city is jammed, 14% of Hong Kong are roads, the harbour used to be more than 2km wide, now it’s only 800m due to reclaimed land for commercial development and the waters are over fished. Luckily it is improving a little, and that’s what motivates me.”

“My main goal is to keep and protect as much of the ama-zing Hong Kong environment as possible. The variety is amazing and I believe the bay I live in is the most beauti-ful one in whole Asia. Where do you get that kind of para-dise within a short distance from a major city?”

“I guess everybody has a favourite species. For me it’s sharks who gave me the most rewarding experiences un-der water in my life. I thought there should be a way to show appreciation and so I started fighting for their pro-tection.”

“One of our projects is replanting of mangroves – not an easy task but at least people start caring about these things. We also work on moving some coral because of a planned new boat pier – an even trickier task but exciting. It’s good to be able to combine work and passion.”

“I don’t get anything back from my engagement with sharks, except that, of course, some of them can be saved.”

“There is not much fish left in Hong Kong’s waters. Fish farmers don’t give anything back; they just take from the nature. And they tend to take too much.”

“It is encouraging to see that some people value the con-servation work we do here. Lately, I even got a letter of appreciation from Bill Clinton. That was rewarding!”

Some background on Charles Frew:
Charles Frew was born in the UK and graduated fromboth Liverpool and Heriot Watt Universityl and started working in the area of marine ecology. His first assign-ments were in Honduras and Spain.
Charles spent almost two years on fishing ships, inspecting their work and its impact on marine environ-ment. He has orked in the Philip-pines, Indonesia and Central America . Fascinated by Hong Kong’s islands and marine life, Charles decided to stay and settled in one of the beautiful bays.

Some background on Asiatic Marine:
Asiatic Marine is a multi-disci-plinary company with 15 years of experience in Asia providing a wide range of marine ser-vices to international clients within marine environmental, conservation and documentary production industries. Its focus is on four areas:
- Marine consultancy (marine and environmental impact assessment services for all types of projects)
- Shark conservation and diving
- Marine Seafari, offshore fishing, diving & kite surfing
- Underwater filming and production

If you would like to engage with the work Charles Frew and Asiatic Marine or get to know more about them please visit www.asiaticmarine.com,
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.