President Dee-hwa CHONG was born in Tokyo, Japan, and migrated to Hong Kong in year 1974. Being fond of observing wild animals since childhood, CHONG is highly interested in evolution, ecology and geographical distribution of animals, and even formed an indispensable bond with fishes. Shortly from his graduation from primary education, he has already undertaken the investigation on the distribution of freshwater fishes in Hong Kong. He spent his spare time to go to rivers and streams for observations, researches and collecting fish species.
In 1983 CHONG went to Beijing for study. During his studies abroad, he regularly visited the old book shops to collect the books and bibliographies about fishes. Meanwhile, he visited Beijing Museum of Natural History, and the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, then located in Zhongguancun. He got acquainted with ichthyology scholars at that time, like Hong-yuan WANG, Bao-shan ZHENG and Si-zhong LI. Under their utmost guidances, he concentrated on making a thorough study of some basic fields, such as classification, anatomy, biogeography, and so on. In late 1986, he went to Shanghai Fisheries University and visited another ichthyology scholar, Han-lin WU, and pursued advanced studies of ichthyology classification under WU's guidance. His first analysis report about freshwater fishes was then completed and issued subsequently on journal of Hong Kong University Natural History Society, with additional data of ecological environment (Chong, D. H. and D. Dudgeon, 1992, Hong Kong Stream Fishes: An annotated checklist with remarks on conservation status, Memories of the Hong Kong Natural History Society).
In particular, he spent over 20 years to investigate all the freshwater habitats in Hong Kong, including rivers, streams and wetlands. He also collected and examined thousands of fish specimens. In 1992, he completed an initial report on the habitats of fishes in freshwater and salt water around Hong Kong, with 96 kinds of fishes recorded, and established the basis of current freshwater fish research in Hong Kong.
He had participated in publication of numerous issues, including:
- 1994, The Agriculture Encyclopedia in China- Aquatics I/II (《中國農業百科全書─水產卷 上、下卷》),
- 2001, Fish Culture Records (《魚文化錄》),
- 2002, Poisonous and Medical Fishes in China (《中國有毒及藥用魚類》),
- 2008, Fauna Sinica - Osteichthyes - Perciformes - Gobioidei (《中國動物誌─硬骨魚綱─鱸形目─鰕虎魚亞目》),
- Keys to the fishes and fish-like animals of Japan (English Version) (《日本産魚類檢索﹝英文版﹞》).
Since 2002, he has been invited by Laboratory of Ichthyology, Shanghai Ocean University to be a research consultant, and concentrated on researches such as classification, evolution and geographical distribution of fishes in China, Hong Kong and Western Pacific Ocean.
