The discovery on Thursday of a protected marine species off the coast of Hualien that had been harpooned shows that illegal harpooning is still rampant in Taiwan and action must be taken to preserve the protected species, the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation said yesterday.
Foundation chief executive Chang Hui-chun (張卉君) said that a whale-watching boat carrying clients and two of the foundation’s guides discovered a spinner dolphin drifting in the ocean with two harpoons sticking out of it at about 10am on Thursday.
Despite efforts to lift the dolphin onto the boat so that it could be taken to the Hualien Fishing Port for emergency medical treatment, it died from its injuries about 10 minutes after it was spotted, Chang said.
Photo courtesy of the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation
The spinner dolphin was “at least three years old” and a male, the guides said.
Upon the boat’s return to port, the carcass of the dolphin was handed over to the Coast Guard Administration’s Hualien Fishing Port security office, which forwarded the body, harpoons and bits of leading cable that were still attached to the harpoons to the Hualien Farglory Ocean Park for temporary storage, Chang said.
The office’s deputy director, Lai Ming-chi (賴銘琦), said it would conduct an investigation into which fishing boats in Hualien County are registered to carry harpoon guns in an attempt to find the owner of the harpoons.
Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation office manager Lai Wei-jen (賴威任) said that the harpoons found in the dolphin are commonly used to harpoon swordfish.
Swordfish are not in season and the motives of any fishermen going out to sea with harpoons should be investigated, Lai said, adding that the fishermen might have cut the dolphin loose after realizing they had harpooned the wrong fish.
According to the Council of Agriculture, any person who attempts to hunt or kill a spinner dolphin, which is ranked as a second-class species on the council’s rare animals list, has violated the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) and could be sentenced to between six months and five years in prison, or fined between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million (US$6,206 and US$31,032).
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS