ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1617954
Risk assessment of coastal dredging sediment plumes on the habitat of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shenzhen university, Shenzhen, China
- 2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Construction and Environment, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
- 3Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Chimica e Ambientale, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Pearl River Estuary (PRE) and Hong Kong (HK) Waters are identified as one of the most important habitats worldwide for Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis). However, the extremely rapid growth of coastal cities and near-shore reclamation lands posed great threats to delicate marine ecosystems and protected species. Dredging operations can exert non-negligible negative impacts on humpback dolphins, with high sediment concentrations standing out as a particularly significant threat. This study aims to apply a new risk assessment approach based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and unsupervised machine learning technique for quantitatively estimating the risk of high turbidity to marine mammals. As an extension, the risk to the natural habitat in PRE was statistically compared among five possible dredging locations according to HK reclamation projects. Results showed that sediment plumes could be enlarged quickly if dredging sites close to places with high density of macro-vortices, such as the north corner of Lantau Island. In terms of temporal effects, dredging under scenarios with northeast wind has a higher probability of posing significant risks to dolphin habitats. In accordance with this strategy, reliable suggestions on the choice of construction location or period could be provided to the decision-makers before or during the coastal projects. The proposed strategy can also be flexibly extended to any coastal environment, serving as a valuable example for coastal and environmental management.
Keywords: Risk Assessment, Humpback dolphin, Coastal dredging, Pearl River Estuary, sediment transport
Received: 25 Apr 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Stocchino, Yin, De Leo, JIN and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alessandro Stocchino, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Construction and Environment, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.