Placing a 3m-long, missile-shaped fish aggregating device in front of the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) building, the Taipei chapter of Greenpeace staged a protest yesterday, urging the council’s Fisheries Bureau to present solutions to protect fish resources from further depletion.
The group said eight illegal fish aggregating devices — objects, such as buoys, that are used to attract fish — were found in the western and central Pacific by the Greenpeace vessel Esperenza during an expedition in the Pacific Ocean between September and December last year. This -appears to show that there are still loopholes in the current ocean management measures, the group added.
The group called for a total ban on the use of fish aggregating devices and the establishment of marine reserves to help conserve the ocean.
Taiwan Greenpeace oceans campaigner Yen Ning (顏寧) said the decision to reopen some high-seas pockets for fishing, made at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s annual meeting, which officials from the Fisheries Bureau had attended last week, was a setback for ocean conservation.
The group also invited the minister and other officials to board the Esperenza, now docked at Keelung Harbor, and urged them to present eco-friendly fishing policies as soon as possible.
Fisheries Agency Deputy Director-General Tsay Tzu-yaw (蔡日耀) said the bureau has conformed with the decisions made by the commission, and it would support methods that can improve fishermen’s livelihoods and boost the sustainability of fish resources.
Responding to the group’s demand that the bureau take an active role in fisheries management since Taiwan has the most vessels — more than 1,600 — in the area, Tsay said despite the large number of ships, Taiwan still has only one vote in the commission.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching