The Lost Sea (刪海經), a documentary aimed at raising public awareness about the horseshoe crab, premiered earlier this week in the community of Houfeng Harbor (后豐) on Kinmen, just before the completion of Shuitou Commercial Port (水頭商港).
The documentary tells the story of how the port’s construction destroyed the crab’s habitat on the outlying island of Kinmen and forced local fishermen to leave their homes.
On Sunday, shortly after arriving at the port, film director Hung Chun-hsiu (洪淳修) led marine ecologist Hong Teh-sun (洪德舜) and five students in an elaborate demonstration during which they donned masks made from the shells of the marine species and shouted: “We don’t have a home. Restore our habitat” and “We don’t have a home. We will cross the sea to make our plea.”
Photo: CNA
The director said horseshoe crabs once thrived along the shoreline of Shiasu Village (夏墅), near Kinmen National Park.
Local authorities should have established a horseshoe crab conservation zone in that area, but did not do so because of road projects connected to the commercial port, he said.
He said the intertidal zone of Houfeng Harbor used to be the main habitat of horseshoe crabs, but the zone had been expropriated to make space for the construction of the port.
After the restoration in 2008 of the “small three links” — direct transportation, postal and trade links between Taiwan and China — the establishment of a commercial port is no longer necessary, he said.
The screening of the film is aimed at eliciting public opinion both at home and overseas, the director said, adding that the film will be shown worldwide to bring more attention to its cause.
Hung said he will return to Kinmen when the documentary has gained enough influence to put pressure on the island’s authorities to address the issue of the vanishing horseshoe crabs.
The documentary is available to schools, organizations and businesses by appointment, he said.
Kinmen Economic Affairs Department Director-General Weng Tzu-bao (翁自保) said he is open to the suggestion of establishing a horseshoe crab conservation zone in Shiasu, and that a breeding and placement project for the species will proceed as planned.
The Kinmen Fisheries Research Institute has bred more than 200,000 horseshoe crab larvae each year over the past decade.
The crab larvae are placed in the intertidal zone of Lesser Kinmen (小金門), where they are allowed to grow freely, the institute said.
Scientists say it has thrived for more than 200 million years, until the start of construction on the Shuitou Commercial Port about a decade ago.
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:
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
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