On March 9, a large oil spill was reported north of Green Island (綠島). Diving instructors photographed the spill and posted the images on Facebook. The news spread like wildfire and, over the following two days, Academia Sinica experts, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) representatives and the Taitung County Government made their way to Green Island to investigate and begin cleaning up the mess.
The EPA on March 12 held a news conference to summarize the extent of the spill and how it was being addressed. The government’s rapid response owes much to many unnamed heroes on Green Island, who carried out the underwater investigation. People working at the Green Island Marine Research Station — planned by Academia Sinica for 10 years, but not yet officially opened — and researchers who dived into the sea to gather first-hand information. These people were crucial to the investigation’s prompt execution.
Green Island was chosen as the location for a marine research station because former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) talked about protecting the island’s marine resources at the National Conference on Sustainable Development on April 21, 2006.
In July of that year, then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) inspected the island and announced plans that it would be developed into an international eco-tourism destination.
In 2009, the Academia Sinica Biodiversity Research Center’s Cheng Ming-hsiu (鄭明修) began a series of studies on Green Island, cooperating with the Ministry of Justice’s Agency of Corrections, the Ministry of Finance’s National Property Administration, the Ministry of Culture and the Taitung County Government.
It was not until the station’s main building and ownership of the land were transferred to the Academia Sinica in 2012 that renovations on the facility began and personnel were stationed there.
The station is for the use of the Academia Sinica and marine researchers from Taiwan and abroad, and has organized many events to promote marine environmental protection and education. Despite this it has never received much attention from high-level government officials.
Whether this is because of its location, or because it is not a mainstream gene and biotechnology park is unclear.
The station has not been officially opened and the appointment of technical staff and development of the station have been difficult to implement, not to mention the development of an international marine research station on Green Island, similar to Australia’s Lizard Island or the US’ Friday Harbor.
Green Island has a rich coral reef and abundant ecological and recreational resources.
However, incidents such as the disappearance of orbicular batfish from Pingtung County’s Houbi Lake Marine Resource Reserve Exhibition Center last year due to suspected illegal fishing, the killing of an endangered Humphead wrasse off the island by a business owner, the collapse of the largest cluster of porous coral in the world, possibly due to Typhoon Meranti, and now the oil spill, have devastated the island’s marine ecology.
Ironically, 10 years have passed, and the Democratic Progressive Party is back in power, but the official establishment of the station as the outpost for research, monitoring and education still seems far away.
I suppose that before then, just as with the oil spill, the station and its staff will continue playing the role of unnamed heroes guarding the seas around Green Island.
Allen Chen is a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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