Publication
Bohai Report 2025 final
This is the eighteenth year for Global Flyway Network (GFN)’s fieldwork at the Luannan Coast, Bohai Bay, China. Chris Hassell, Katherine Leung and Yang Liu carried out the fieldwork for 5 weeks, from 30 April to 4 June 2025, 36 days in total. The main findings from this year’s fieldwork showed that in 2025, Red Knot Calidris canutus highest peak daily counts at Nanpu increased from the low numbers of 2021-2024. The biggest day count was 30,000 on 21 May at Nanpu. The number of Red Knot using the Luannan Coast varies a lot from year to year. The 2018 (48,630) and 2019 (47,537) counts were our highest since 2015, and the lowest was 3,660 in 2023 since the start of our studies in 2010. None of the non- breeding areas of the East Asian – Australasian Flyway (EAAF) have had dramatic changes in the numbers of Red Knots utilising them in the 2024/25 season that we are aware of, so, despite the dramatic changes in numbers over the past 10 years at the Luannan Coast, we do not think there is a flyway-wide crash in Red Knot numbers.