The Marine Port Bureau yesterday said that it is in the process of stipulating guidelines for the use of flotation devices at sea in a bid to reduce casualties caused by improper use.
The announcement came after two separate incidents off coasts in the nation’s northeast.
The first was last month, when a man surnamed Chen (陳) sailed out on a boat made of polystyrene foam to go fishing at night.
Chen’s boat was capsized after being hit by large waves.
He was found by coast guard personnel, but was reportedly reluctant to be taken ashore, wanting the coast guard to find his boat first.
Separately, on Wednesday last week, three men and a woman went fishing off the coast of Keelung in a polystyrene boat.
All four were tossed into the sea after the boat was struck by large waves.
Three of them were rescued, but one was found dead the next day.
Reports showed that the four leased the boat from a rental service that did not provide life jackets.
The bureau said that leisure activities in public waters are regulated by local government authorities.
Polystyrene foam boats, canoes, pedal boats or other flotation devices are not defined as ships that can be regulated by the Ships Act (船舶法), it said, although some local governments have stipulated rules for them.
The bureau has raised the issue with the Council of Agriculture’s Fisheries Agency, as many people use such craft to go fishing at sea.
The Fisheries Agency said that people fishing at sea are engaging in a leisure activity, so they should not be regulated as strictly as commercial fishing operations.
Rules regulating fishing as a leisure activity would have to be written by the administrative agency in charge of ocean affairs, which has yet to be established, the bureau said.
To ensure safety in public waters, the bureau said it has invited specialists from the Fisheries Agency, the Coast Guard Administration and local governments to draft guiding principles on the use of flotation devices, which would be incorporated into the rules stipulated by the local governments.
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