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Government urged to map the seas to protect corals

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.
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