The Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) and several other environmental groups yesterday said that the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium kept whale sharks in small tanks that caused their health to deteriorate.
The group urged the aquarium to release the last remaining whale shark and not to bring in new ones.
According to EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏), the aquarium in Pingtung County has held three whale sharks — a species that has been listed on “Appendix II” of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and labeled “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature — in captivity since April 2004, in the name of education and marine research.
Photo courtesy of the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan
The groups’ investigation suggested that one whale shark died of poor health in 2007, another was secretly released into the ocean without undergoing rehabilitation or tagging for follow-up research the same year and the remaining 6m-long whale shark was being kept in a small tank, Chen said.
Showing a video clip and photographs of the remaining whale shark at a press conference in Taipei yesterday, Chen said that it had scars on its tail from hitting the tank’s walls and reefs in the tank because the tank was too small.
Citing data from whale shark tag release research conducted by Chuang Shou-cheng (莊守正), an associate professor at the National Taiwan Ocean University’s Department of Environmental Biology and Fisheries Science, the groups said that whale sharks often stay in deep waters — about 5m to 10m below the sea surface, but sometimes submerge to 80m below sea level, and that they can migrate up to 34km a day.
Keeping the whale shark in its current tank, which is 33m long, 22m wide and about 8m to 12m in depth, is like keeping it in a jail cell, the groups said, adding that the video showed the whale shark swimming in the tank in the same circling direction.
It took the whale shark about 50 to 80 seconds to swim a circle in the tank, which meant that it would swim about 360 to 576 circles just in the eight hours that the aquarium was open daily, the groups said.
Lai Wei-jen (賴威任), office director of the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation, said whale sharks have a life span of about 70 to 100 years in the ocean, but data from an aquarium in Okinawa, Japan, showed that 16 whale sharks kept in captivity during the period from 1980 to 1998 lived for an average of only 16 months.
Lee Chan-rong (李展榮), an official at the aquarium, said the aquarium has proposed to tag release the remaining whale shark after it introduces a new small whale shark into the tank, allowing the bigger whale shark to teach the new whale shark for a while.
The groups urged the government not to approve the proposal to introduce any whale sharks, and to ask the aquarium to tag release the remaining whale shark as soon as possible.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS