A common bottlenose dolphin was found dead on a beach at Guihou Harbor (龜吼) in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) in the early hours of Wednesday, the latest incident in what is believed to be an unusual spike of stranded dolphins and whales in the aftermath of recent typhoons.
Taiwan Cetacean Society official Yang Wei-cheng (楊瑋誠) said the overwhelming majority of the strandings were likely to have been the result of sonar emissions, which can frighten many species of cetaceans, which use ultrasound for navigation.
Soon after the discovery of the dead dolphin, Coast Patrol Corps 2-1 and Gui Hou Harbour Safety Inspection Office personnel established a cordon and notified the society to remove the animal, sources said.
Photo: Lin Chia-tung, Taipei Times
On Aug. 29, a dolphin was found dead at Green Bay (翡翠灣), less than 1km from the latest incident.
Since Typhoon Megi made landfall on Sept. 28, there have been 12 strandings of whales or dolphins on Taiwan’s coastlines north of Yilan and Taoyuan, with all the animals being deep-sea species that spend time at depths of 1,000m to 2,000m, Yang said, adding that the preliminary results of an investigation would be published in the middle of next month.
In 2005, between 15 and 20 cetaceans were found dead or dying on beaches in northern Taiwan after Typhoon Haitang, Yang said.
At the time, the society enlisted international experts to assist in its research and based on the large volumes of air found in the dead animals’ organs, it was concluded that they died of decompression sickness following a rapid ascent from deep water.
The scientific consensus on cetacean strandings, based mostly on work by Western scientists in the Atlantic Ocean, blames the phenomenon on military-grade sonar, Yang said.
Prior to their death, the animals were probably subjected to sonar emissions from military sources, became terrified and attempted to flee by making a rapid ascent, resulting in fatal decompression, Yang said.
Because many powerful typhoons have passed near Taiwan without incident, a causal relationship between typhoons and strandings cannot be established, Yang said, adding that naval activities concurrent with Typhoon Megi might have caused the strandings.
The quietness of modern submarines has led to a corresponding increase in the power of sonar equipment used to detect them, and the US Navy has placed sonar devices in the waters near Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and the Philippines — to Taiwan’s north and south — to counter the threat of missile-armed submarines from China, Yang said.
Due to those developments, large-scale cetacean strandings will most likely be repeated, Yang said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS