Fears over the fate of collector urchins — Tripneustes gratilla — have prompted conservationists to call on the government to suspend commercial harvesting of the sea creature.
A survey early this year of the Penghu Archipelago region shows that collector urchins are dying out, Penghu County Zooxanthellae Association honorary chairman Chen Chin-chuan (陳盡川) said.
The urchins are considered a delicacy and a species important to Penghu County’s economy.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
Commercial harvesting of the species typically begins in June and runs through September, a period that the government imposed in 2010 to prevent overfishing, but the starting date last year was moved forward two weeks to mid-May.
Penghu County “Commissioner Chen Kuang-fu (陳光復) and fisheries authorities must understand that Penghu’s maritime ecology is at the edge of catastrophe and needs responsible government agencies to take decisive action to salvage the situation,” Chen Chin-chuan said on Facebook.
The survey covered “vast stretches” of the sea around the Penghu Archipelago, including areas near Mudou Island (目斗嶼), Gupo Island (姑婆嶼) and the proposed Wukan sea urchin ecological protective area.
Chen Chin-chuan said all the urchins the volunteers found were more than 10cm in size, suggesting advanced ages, or more than two years old, nearing the end of the species’ life span, while smaller urchins had completely vanished, indicating that the “species’ reproductive capacity had broken down and no new life had been formed.”
The survey showed that the population of many economically important shellfish and mollusks are depleted, Chen Chin-chuan said.
“We predict that if harvesting and fishing is allowed on May 15, [collector] urchins would become rare species in the Penghu maritime region,” Chen Chin-chuan said.
The county government should forbid this year’s harvest and give volunteers permission to relocate urchins to a designated facility to allow breeding in a protected environment, he said.
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