A Taiwanese academic and two researchers at universities in the US have discovered two new batfish species that live at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but their existence might be endangered by the BP oil spill.
“This is the first time that we have just found a new species at the same time they are at risk of extinction,” said Ho Hsuan-ching (何宣慶), a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center and one of three researchers who made the discovery, yesterday.
Halieutichthys, commonly known as pancake batfish because of their rounded and small flat bodies, are bottom dwellers that move by “walking” with their stout, arm-like fins, the scientists said.
Ho and his colleagues examined 5,000 specimens from the western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and discovered that five different species had been previously grouped together as one.
Three of the five live in the Gulf of Mexico, including two new species, Halieutichthys intermedius and Halieutichthys bispinosus.
“All five species live in waters either partially or fully encompassed by the recent oil spill, with the [Halieutichthys] Intermedius completely restricted to the oil spill area,” Ho said.
He expressed concern that Halieutichthys intermedius was at risk of extinction unless another habitat could be found because of the uncertainty surrounding the impact of the oil spill on the fish’s environment and food supply.
Even if some fish survived severe conditions, such as food shortages, their offspring might have trouble subsisting, Ho said.
According to Academia Sinica, co-author John Sparks from the American Museum of Natural History believes that the discoveries “underscore the potential loss of undocumented biodiversity that a disaster of this scale may portend.”
The study, was published in the Journal of Fish Biology on July 15.
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