About 19 tonnes of garbage was collected yesterday by 507 divers in a nationwide ocean cleanup initiated by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).
As of 6pm, about 19 tonnes of trash had been collected from the seabed, not including New Taipei City and Lienchiang County, as they had started later, EPA Department of Water Quality Protection Director Yeh Chun-hung (葉俊宏) said.
Keelung’s Chaojing Park (潮境公園) was the main venue for the event, where EPA Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) spoke to participants nationwide via live-streamed video.
Photo courtesy of the Keelung City Government
Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) told Lee they had even found an iPhone 5 and an electric steamer in the ocean.
More than 120 volunteers rushed to register for the event as soon as the city government announced it, Keelung Department of Economic Affairs Marine Affairs division chief Tsai Fu-ning (蔡馥嚀) said.
Chaojing Park was used as a landfill before it became a park in 2002, Tsai said, adding that the city government last year designated the intertidal waters off the park as a conservation bay, where fishing and harvesting seaweed are forbidden.
One of the divers, Lin Yo-ping (林佑平), said he and fellow members of his diving society have been volunteering to clean seabeds nationwide since 2014.
Despite the many fishing nets discarded in the area, the diving society has begun to see more fish, dolphins and sea turtles in the conservation bay, he said.
Lin said he has become increasingly optimistic about the nation’s oceanic environment, but added that the real problem is garbage on land, not in the sea.
“Reducing the volume of trash is the key to solving the problem,” he said.
The EPA is tightening its restrictions on plastic bags, with nearly 100,000 additional stores saying they will not provide free plastic bags starting next year, Lee said, adding he hopes the nation will become plastic-free one day.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS