To mitigate the potential effects of offshore wind farm construction on wildlife, the Ocean Conservation Administration yesterday said that it aims to train 40 marine mammal observers this year.
The agency held two policy explanation meetings, one in Taipei on Monday and the other in Kaohsiung yesterday, and has commissioned Awareocean Technology Co to conduct training sessions from next month, it said.
Applicants must be at least 18 years old and cannot be students, and must have experience working at sea or conducting ecological surveys, it added.
Due to the limited training budget of NT$2 million (US$63,432), only 40 trainees may participate, Marine Conservation Division senior specialist Ko Yuan-chuan (柯勇全) said, adding that the agency has already received nearly 150 applications.
After it stops accepting applications at 5pm on Monday next week, the agency would draw lots to decide on candidates and would finalize the list by June 24, it said.
The government has vowed to generate 5.5 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms by 2025, attracting global energy developers to Taiwan and facilitating their connections with local industries.
During environmental impact assessments for construction projects off the coast of western Taiwan, the developers promised to employ observers to avoid harming marine mammals near the construction sites, the agency said.
As the cetacean observer system is brand new to Taiwan, the Environmental Protection Administration only required developers to hire “well-trained” observers, without defining their required expertise, while the oceans agency would evaluate its training program and might set up clearer criteria at a later date, Ko said.
The training sessions, which are to begin on July 9 in Taipei, are to include lectures by members of the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s Green Energy and Environmental Research Laboratories, the Taiwan Cetacean Society, Awareocean, PricewaterhouseCoopers Taiwan and WeatherRisk Explore Inc, Awareocean said.
All trainees are also required to spend one-and-half days aboard ships to put their learned skills into practice, which might take place in the waters off central Taiwan between July 15 and Aug. 31, depending on weather conditions, it said.
After passing a final written test, the trainees would receive a training certificate, it said.
However, the certificate does not guarantee that the trainees would get jobs, as the energy developers might ask them to undertake additional training, Ko said.
Some applicants have raised concerns about employment conditions, given that construction and observation tasks are susceptible to weather changes, he said, adding that the conservation agency would further discuss the matter with energy developers.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS