The Fisheries Research Institute last month released 500kg of eels into the Lanyang River (蘭陽溪) in Yilan County in an effort to boost the eel population in the area.
Eels found in Taiwan, known as Japanese eels or Anguilla japonica, have seen an annual drop-off in numbers, because of overfishing and river pollution, the institute said.
At its peak, catching eels was a profitable industry valued at about NT$560 million (US$17.6 million) per year, it said.
However, without the technology to raise eels artificially in the nation, the annual catch has declined from a peak of 50,000 to 60,000 tonnes to just several thousand tonnes, it said.
Raising eels artificially is difficult because of a lack of knowledge of preferred habitats and food for eels, Fisheries Research Institute Director-General Chen June-ru (陳君如) said.
Last month’s release was the 60th repopulation effort since 1976 and, so far this year, the agency has released about 1,500 eels in total, Chen said, adding that each eel carried a chip to allow researchers to study their migratory routes, life history and growth.
The data would help local aquafarmers raise eels artificially, Chen said.
Eels in the region usually mature in the middle to lower course of rivers before entering the ocean and mating in the Mariana Trench, and the young eels would be carried back to the river systems of Taiwan, Japan, China and Korea via ocean currents, Chen said.
The eel population in Yilan County is at most one-fifth of what it was a decade ago, Yilan County Fisheries Division chief Chen Tsu-chien (陳祖健) said, adding that the county has put in place regulations that ban catching eels no larger than 8cm.
Only by restricting the catching of young eels would they have a chance to return to the ocean and reproduce, Chen Tsu-chien said.
The county hopes the regulatory measures would help fishery resources become sustainable, he said.
Repopulation efforts should be a public effort, and people who accidentally catch young eels should release them again, he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods