Environmentalists have renewed calls for oyster farmers to switch to environmentally friendly material for cultivation equipment to reduce effects on other marine life.
Oyster farms typically house oysters in cages enclosed in polyurethane or polystyrene foam, which environmentalists say can easily break apart during harvesting, affecting the marine environment.
Oyster farmers in Yunlin County, where conditions are ideal, once used a suspension method of cultivation in which oysters are hung from a buoy, allowing the shellfish to move up and down with the changing tides.
Photo taken from Facebook
However, farmers changed to a cage culture method in an attempt to overcome space restrictions they encountered with suspension cultures in the shallow waters.
A farmer surnamed Lin (林) said that a single enclosure can house up to 1,000 strings of oysters.
“That enclosure will weigh up to 100kg when the oysters are mature. If a sufficient amount of polystyrene foam or polyurethane foam is not used, then a whole year of hard work will sink to the bottom of the ocean,” Lin said.
However, environmentalists say that the foam will become a waste management problem, as polystyrene foam cannot be used in the enclosures for more than three years.
While polyurethane lasts longer — up to 10 years — it cannot withstand strong waves caused by typhoons, they said, adding that foam broken off during harvesting is swept out to sea.
“If that foam is broken into small enough pieces, it gets ingested by fish that mistake it for food,” one environmentalist said. “In the end, people might end up eating that polystyrene foam” when they eat the fish.
Larger pieces of polystyrene foam sometimes wash up on the coastline where they can obstruct flood prevention systems and increase the risk of flooding, they said.
Another oyster farmer, surnamed Wang (王), said that polystyrene foam is an affordable and practical solution for farmers.
“If farmers are required to find a new material to use, realistic issues need to be addressed, such as whether funding allows for it,” Wang said.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
STEERING FAILURE: The first boat of its class is experiencing teething issues as it readies for acceptance by the navy, according to a recent story about rudder failure The Hai Kun (海鯤), the nation’s first locally built submarine, allegedly suffered a total failure of stern hydraulic systems during the second round of sea acceptance trials on June 26, and sailors were forced to manually operate the X-rudder to turn the submarine and return to port, news Web site Mirror Daily reported yesterday. The report said that tugboats following the Hai Kun assisted the submarine in avoiding collisions with other ships due to the X-rudder malfunctioning. At the time of the report, the submarine had completed its trials and was scheduled to begin diving and surfacing tests in shallow areas. The X-rudder,
RSS