Taiwan is drafting a public statement to slam Greenpeace activists for boarding a fishing boat in the South Pacific earlier this week to check for an illegal shark fin harvest, a fisheries official said yesterday.
The Fisheries Agency will send a protest letter to the multilateral Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and to Greenpeace, the international environmental group that the government says inappropriately forced its way onto a Taiwan-registered boat on Monday to inspect the shark catch.
Activists on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza obtained the Taiwanese crew��s permission to board the ship in waters east of the Solomon Islands, Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jason Collins said.
After boarding the fishing vessel, they found about 110kg of shark fins, he said.
The amount of separated shark fins probably exceeded the legal weight limit, he said.
Although shark catches are legal, the 25-country fishing commission restricts the weight of severed fins per boat to ensure that live sharks are not being thrown back into the ocean.
��Then they just sink to the bottom and die,�� Collins said.
In response, Fisheries Agency deputy director-general James Sha (�F�Ӥ@) said the agency would send a letter of protest to Greenpeace for its actions against the Taiwanese fishing boat.
��The boat was sailing on the high seas and according to international law, it��s the country where the boat is registered that has jurisdiction over it when it��s sailing on the high seas,�� Sha told the Taipei Times by telephone.
��Greenpeace is not in any position to intervene, especially when it��s a non-governmental organization, not a state law enforcement body,�� he said.
He said the fishing boat did not violate any Taiwanese law.
In response to Collins�� statement that activists on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza had obtained permission from the fishing vessel��s crew prior to boarding to check the catch, Sha said that ��the captain gave the permission only because he felt the crew��s safety was threatened [by the activists].��
��We will protest to Greenpeace directly and to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission,�� Sha said.
Taiwan is a member of the international commission ��and we want to know why our fishing boat��s safety wasn��t guaranteed,�� he said.
Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in Taiwan and in Chinese restaurants in other countries.
More than 100 shark species are being ��commercially exploited,�� casting doubt on the long-term survival of some of them, the Switzerland-based Shark Foundation has said.
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