Fishers caught a rare megamouth shark off the coast of Hualien on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said.
The 3.5m, 612kg shark was already dead when the fishers pulled it from the sea, the coast guard said, quoting the fishing boat’s owner.
In accordance with a mandatory catch-and-report measure implemented by the Fisheries Agency in 2013, the catch was reported to the agency and a team of experts at National Taiwan Ocean University, it said.
The experts took tissue samples from the shark at the Port of Hualien before it was processed and sold, it added.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that the shark was sold to a restaurant in Yilan County for NT$61,200.
The megamouth shark is a filter-feeder that swims with its mouth open, filtering water for tiny plankton and jellyfish.
The species is rarely seen and fewer than 100 specimens have been observed or caught since it was first reported in 1976, according to research published last year in the biological journal PeerJ.
Megamouth sharks are most frequently seen along the Kuroshio Current, spanning Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, the study said.
Despite being rarely seen, megamouth sharks are not recognized as a protected species in Taiwan and commercial fishing of the species is allowed.
Liu Shang-yin (劉商隱), one of the researchers in the study, said that the government should better protect large and rare fish species such as the megamouth shark.
The environmental group Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation said that the catch-and-report measure is only a nominal rule, adding that the government should ban the commercial fishing of megamouth sharks.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai