Located in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, the new Tema Container Terminal is the largest water project in Ghana. After expansion, the Tema Port is expected to be a major freight hub in West Africa, able to handle the world's largest container ships and provide high-quality and convenient port infrastructure and services. The project is contracted by China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. and contributed to by CCCC Fourth Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd., both subsidiaries of China Communications Construction Company Limited (CCCC). The area around the project is the main habitat of a world-class endangered species of sea turtles and home to five of the world's seven major species of sea turtles.
In order to avoid impact of the project construction on the fragile surrounding ecological environment and to build a safety screen to protect the sea turtles, the project department employed an Indian environmental expert with 12 years of experience in environmental-protection management at the construction site and set up a professional environmental-protection group involving several backbone employees. All staff members working at the environmental-protection front line are local Ghanaian employees.
A staff member at the Tema Container Terminal project inspects newly-born sea turtles on a beach. [Photo provided to sasac.gov.cn]
To improve the environment monitoring capacity, the project department invested 307,600 yuan (about $44,200) in purchasing advanced instruments for detection of gas, dust particles and noise, and set up more than 30 monitoring points at the construction site and the living areas of builders to collect data every day for sea turtle protection.
The period from October to April next year is the egg-laying period of the sea turtles. To avoid any impact from the construction on the breeding and keep the original ecological balance, the project department launched a "Chinese delivery room", or the sea turtle incubation center in November 2017 under the guidance of technical experts. The center was built based on the incubation environment of the sea turtles and the turtle eggs within the construction red lines. The turtles and eggs on the nearby beaches will be collected for unified care and incubation, and the newly-born sea turtles will be released on the Sakumono Beach after assessment by the experts.
Newly-born sea turtles are to be released on the Sakumono Beach. [Photo provided to sasac.gov.cn]
The site of the sea turtle incubation center was strictly selected. It had to be a relatively quiet place without any light during the evening; its foundation needed to be built with dry and fine sand and elevated slightly higher than the surrounding terrain; metal was banned in the hatching area to avoid impact to the biological navigation ability of the baby sea turtles. The project department also allocated a batch of PVC pipes from the engineering materials to build the main structure of the incubation area that covers an area of nearly 50 square meters and can accommodate up to 40 nests of sea turtle eggs at the same time. Six specialists are arranged to patrol the beach 24 hours a day, and one professional turtle hatching staff takes care of the turtle hatching. In addition, six local villagers have been hired to protect the turtles at the nearby beach outside the construction area and patrol the beach every night.
A view of the sea turtle incubation center [Photo provided to sasac.gov.cn]
By 2021, the incubation center had collected 21,684 sea turtle eggs and successfully hatched and released 17,087 sea turtles at a hatching rate of more than 80 percent, while the hatching rate of sea turtle eggs under natural condition is only about 10 to 20 percent.
To promote the turtle-protection work to a new level, the project department reaches out to the surrounding schools and communities and actively gives relevant lectures. Pupils and workers from local primary schools and social organizations have also been invited to visit the center. On special days like World Environment Day, the project department also organizes voluntary activities to clean the beaches, distributes turtle protection leaflets, and plant trees, which greatly encouraged local villagers, citizens and students in the affected area to participate in sea turtle protection work.
A view of the newly-born sea turtles released to the sea [Photo provided to sasac.gov.cn]
The sea turtle protection action of the project department has won wide attention and high praise from the local society and Chinese mainstream media. CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, and the website of the State Council of China, as well as Hunan TV have reported the action several times. Xinhua News Agency once released an article pointing out that the sea turtle protection is an exploration of the Chinese enterprises' overseas green construction and engineering. It promotes the "green" energy from China under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.
(Executive editor: Li Zhiyong)
