Environmental activists and coral fishermen reached consensus during a public hearing yesterday that coral harvesting should be strictly regulated to protect the nation’s marine ecosystem and to comply with international regulations.
However, the fishermen demanded the government conduct a thorough investigation of the country’s seabeds so that the exact impact of their coral collecting could be assessed.
The public hearing came almost two months after the Council of Agriculture (COA) announced on May 22 that it would relax coral harvesting laws.
Previously, only coral boats that received their licenses prior to the 1983 harvesting ban could harvest coral. The May announcement, however, opened up coral harvesting to all fishing boats that were outfitted with coral harvesting equipment before the end of last year — a move widely condemned by environmentalists.
“Though many people used to think that only coastline corals host biologically diverse organisms [most coral harvesting occurs in deeper seas], new research has revealed that deep-sea corals are also immensely important to the maintenance of a complete marine ecosystem,” said Allen Chen (陳昭倫), associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica’s Research Center for Biodiversity.
Deep-sea coral conservation is emerging as a strong international trend, said Pei Jai-chyi (裴家騏), an associate professor at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Wildlife Conservation.
“It is very likely that corals will be categorized as a new appendix II item in the CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora] by 2010,” Pei said.
Under CITES regulations, an international agreement under the World Conservation Union (IUCN), an appendix II organism can only be obtained and traded under a “non-detriment” circumstance to its species as well as the environment, Pei said.
“Fishermen in the trade should be armed with this knowledge, so that they do not make futile investments in coral harvesting equipment in the future,” Pei said.
Suao District (蘇澳) Fishermen’s Association secretary-general Lin Yue-ying (林月英) said that coral fishermen as a whole “appreciate and welcome environmentalists’ concern and research on the marine ecosystem, since its soundness is vitally connected to the livelihoods of fishermen.”
“We agree that evidence-based regulations should be implemented to maintain the sustainability of the ecosystem,” Lin said. “However, we feel that if the government could offer us more specific data on Taiwan’s seas, instead of citing foreign research, we would be more inclined to abide by the regulations.”
Lin also protested the media’s portrayal of coral fishermen as “murderers of the sea,” saying that “instead of harvesting reef-building corals, as the media has implied, we collect non-reef-building jewel corals, using advanced harvesting and GPS equipment which reduces ecosystem damage to a minimum.”
One fisherman said the government should help find a balance.
“My family has been harvesting coral for three generations. You highly educated academics can easily find new jobs, but our specialties are confined to the ocean. The government should strike a balance between environmental protection and our right to work” Wu Wen-chang (伍文章) said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods