A civic group announced yesterday it would conduct a series of dives over a three-month period beginning at the end of this month to investigate the health of major coral reef habitats around Taiwan.
The Taiwan Environmental Information Association said its study will target seven areas: the northeast coast; two locations off the coast of Taitung County; Green Island (綠島); Orchid Island (蘭嶼); Dongyuping (東嶼坪) in Penghu County; and Siaoliouchiou (小琉球).
“The survey is aimed at continuing to monitor the health of Taiwan’s coral reefs,” said Association Secretary-General Chen Jui-pin (陳瑞賓), adding that this year will be the third year the survey is being done.
Chen described coral reefs as “tropical rainforests of the sea,” whose health and ecological balance have a major influence on the growth or decline in the populations of other forms of marine life.
Chen Chao-lun (陳昭倫), an associate researcher with the Biodiversity Research Center at Academia Sinica, said the situation in many parts of the world this year has not been good, with the abnormal global climate taking a massive toll on marine life.
The sea has also suffered from pressures of overfishing and human development, Chen said, and he urged the establishment of a marine life protection area to give it breathing space.
For this year’s survey, the association said it would invite local communities to join the cause to help create a groundswell of environmental conservation awareness.
The results of the investigation will be handed over to the California-based Reef Check Foundation for reference.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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