A record-high 24 female green sea turtles laid eggs on Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lanyu) this year, with 83 hatchlings counted as of Wednesday evening, a National Taiwan Ocean University research team said, calling the development “heartening.”
The university’s College of Life Sciences dean Cheng I-Jiunn (程一駿) said the green sea turtle population has increased in the past five years, because they were protected both on Orchid Island, where local residents do not hunt turtles for food, and in the seas near the south of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, where the turtles travel to after laying eggs on Orchid Island.
Cheng said the university’s team has conducted research in Orchid Island’s Siaobadai Bay (小八代灣) in late June or July every year since 1997, and according to their observations, female green sea turtles usually return to the same area to lay eggs every four to six years.
The number of turtles the team has observed has risen from a yearly average of 10 in the past five years to 24 so far this year.
One female turtle identified as No. 3934, which was last recorded visiting Orchid Island six years ago, was temporarily trapped in a bush after laying and burying her eggs, Cheng said, adding that the team and local volunteers worked for two hours to free the turtle from its predicament.
According to Cheng, No. 3934’s eggs were dug up by other female turtles and five were broken in the process, while researchers saved the rest.
The Siabadai Bay team hopes to increase turtle numbers by digging up eggs and moving them to a more elevated area, so that they are not crushed by other turtles as they arrive later, Cheng said.
The team examined all of the 83 hatchlings and released them into the sea, Cheng said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS