The Fisheries Agency said yesterday the nation’s fishermen should be aware of new measures implemented to help New Zealand and Taiwan combat illegal fishing.
The agency said deep-sea fishing boats operating in the west and central Pacific Ocean may be approached by New Zealand fishery officials or police for inspection. Fishermen should ascertain that the New Zealand authorities are genuine and allow them to board.
The goal of the cooperation is to crack down on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
About 1,500 Taiwanese fishing boats operate in the west and central Pacific Ocean, most of which fish for tuna, sharks and sailfish.
The agency said the vessels most likely to be singled out for inspection were 100 small long-line fishing boats — usually used to fish tuna — that are operating in open seas or in foreign fishing waters under contract from other countries.
An agency official said Taiwanese vessels that fail to cooperate with the inspections or are found to have violated regulations could be banned from fishing commercially in those areas.
Crew should keep documents and fishing logbooks handy for access by inspectors, the agency said. Fishing boats should be equipped with proper gear to measure fish and equipment designed to help avoid catching protected sea turtles, sea birds and young fish.
The official said the deal with New Zealand was Taiwan’s first international effort to promote sustainable fishing in the Pacific Ocean since the West and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission passed an agreement in December 2006, the official said.
Taiwan is a member of the international commission.
Each year, up to US$9.5 billion in fish from illegal and unreported catches are sold worldwide, says a report by the high seas task force of the World Commission on Protected Areas.
Illegal and unreported catches comprise 14 percent of the total global marine catch in terms of value, based on figures available for 2001. Up to 30 percent of such fishing occurs in the open seas, where there are fewer controls, the study says.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the