More than 300 fishermen and environmentalists from across the nation marked Oceans Day yesterday afternoon by staging a rally on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, asking the government to take effective measures to address the decline in fish stocks.
Under the blazing sun, fishermen held banners with illustrations of mullet, dolphins and tuna as they chanted slogans.
“Fish every year: endless cycle of life and growth in nature” and “We want a ministry of marine affairs,” they chanted.
Photo: CNA
Western Coast Protection Union secretary-general Tsai Chia-yang (蔡嘉陽) said the fishermen, mostly from central and southern areas, gathered to express the difficulties they are facing amid declining fish stocks.
A fisherman, surnamed Kuo (高), who has been fishing in Greater Tainan’s Anping Harbor (安平港) for decades, said that “fish stocks have dropped a lot, maybe as much by as 90 percent.”
He said there used to be abundant fish resources, such as barracuda, grouper and cuttlefish, just near the coastline, but now it has become difficult to catch fish even out at sea.
“I wish the government would crack down illegal trawling, fish poisoning and the discharge of pollutants,” he said.
Another fisherman, surnamed Chiang (蔣), from Changhua County said the government did not strictly enforce regulations that ban bottom trawling within 3 nautical miles (5.5km) of the coastline, meaning that many juvenile fish are caught before they can mature, causing a decline in fish numbers.
Holding a string of oyster shelves, Chen Pao-kuo (陳寶國), a 77-year-old fisherman from Changhua County’s Wanggong Township (王功), said water pollution in the area has become a serious threat to food safety and fish farming.
“I protest today for the survival of our offspring, because the government — the ‘bandit government’ — has not upheld its responsibility to protect our living standards,” he said.
Wanggong had always been famous for its quality seafood, but industrial pollution has already affected the area, and local fishermen are worried that pollutants from the Central Taiwan Science Park will destroy their fishing industry, Chen said.
The environmental groups and fishermen urged the government to strictly enforce the regulations stipulated in the Fisheries Act (漁業法), punish illegal fishing, establish ocean reserves to maintain sustainable fish populations and re-evaluate the current fishing policies to solve the problem of rapidly declining fish resources.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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