A ranking recently released by Greenpeace Taiwan of nine local sushi restaurants and Japanese chain stores serving seafood found that all nine establishments could make improvements in their selection of fish, as could the fisherman they work with in the methods they use to catch fish.
The ranking — conducted based on information gathered by people posing as customers — on the chains’ procurement policies, commitment to sustainable fishing, traceability of fish catch and data transparency, found that none of the restaurants surveyed knew whether the fishermen affiliated with them used destructive fishing methods.
Among the restaurants polled, only Super Fresh (順益) and iKKi (藝奇) provided answers to whether the fish they use are endangered or vulnerable species.
Super Fresh fared the best in the ranking, scoring 20 out of a possible 30 points, followed by iKKi, which scored 17 points.
Sushi Express, which has about 200 stores and is the nation’s largest sushi chain, performed the poorest, scoring just 2 points in the ranking system.
Greenpeace Taiwan ocean campaigner Hsieh Yi-hsuan (謝易軒) said that excessive and illegal fishing are rampant in today’s fishing industry.
Most restaurants do not publicize information on how they source their seafood, in what ways the fish were caught, or the vulnerability of the fish they serve, Hsieh added.
The phenomenon poses a threat to marine ecology and could destroy fishermen’s livelihoods if fish species that are in demand become extinct.
Among fish species commonly associated with seafood, the danger of extinction is especially critical for tuna, with many tuna species listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species, Hsieh said.
Citing statistics published by the International Scientific Committee in 2012, she said the number of blackfin tuna worldwide had plummeted by 96.4 percent since 1952.
Eel, a popular choice among sashimi lovers, is also on the committee’s list, she added.
Fishing methods play an important role in the conservation of marine animals; for example, seining, gillnetting and the use of fish aggregating devices all have a destructive impact on marine ecology, Hsieh said.
“Seining results in by-catching, which often sees endangered marine species, such as sharks, captured along with fish caught for meat, while fish aggregating devices capture excessive amounts of fish at once by luring them with the shade it creates,” the activist said.
She urged Taiwanese fishermen to heed the stipulations issued during the annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, of which Taiwan is a member, and use fishing tools accordingly.
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
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