Taiwanese boats have the right to conduct ocean surveys within the nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday after a Japanese media report said Taiwanese survey vessels’ intrusions into Japan’s EEZ surrounding the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) had hit a record high last year.
“The EEZs of Taiwan and Japan overlap on a large scale, as the two sides have different stances on the delineation of an EEZ. The government has consistently insisted that our survey boats have the right to engage in scientific survey activities of oceans in our claimed EEZs,” ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang (王珮玲) said in a news release.
Taipei and Tokyo agreed during the first Taiwan-Japan Maritime Affairs Cooperation Dialogue held in October last year to establish a task force on scientific ocean surveys, Wang said.
“We hope to communicate with Tokyo through the task force’s negotiation mechanism and work out a reasonable arrangement regarding scientific survey activities in our overlapping EEZs,” Wang said.
The dialogue mechanism was established in May last year after relations were strained in the wake of the Japan Coast Guard’s seizure of a Taiwanese fishing boat operating about 150 nautical miles (277.8km) east-southeast of the Japan-held Okinotori Atoll.
Whether Okinotori is entitled to a 200 nautical mile EEZ is still under debate, as the uninhabited atoll’s legal status has yet to be settled in the international community.
The ministry’s response came after a front-page report in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun said that statistics compiled by the Japan Coast Guard showed periodic incidents of unauthorized survey activities in Japan’s EEZs surrounding the Diaoyutais and Yonaguni Island by Taiwanese boats every year since 2008, but such incidents had risen since 2014.
Six cases were reported in 2008 and again in 2009, while last year there were eight — the most ever.
The Diaoyutais, known as the Senkakus in Japan, have been a subject of contention between Taipei and Tokyo, especially with regards to fishing rights.
Taipei and Tokyo initiated fishery talks following incidents of Taiwanese fishing boats being seized, detained or expelled by the Japan Coast Guard after Tokyo ratified the UN Law of the Sea Treaty in 1996 and set up a 200-nautical-mile EEZ that included waters surrounding the Diaoyutais.
At the 17th round of talks in 2013, the two sides inked an agreement that allows fishing vessels from the two nations to operate in a large area within an intervention-free fishing zone without being subject to the jurisdiction of the other nation.
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