A migratory duck rarely seen in Taiwan drowned off New Taipei City on Saturday after becoming entangled in an abandoned fishing net. The death of the red-breasted merganser — one of five spotted this year off the city’s coast — prompted renewed concerns about marine waste in Taiwan’s waters.
Discarded fishing nets, fishing lines, plastic and other waste are dangerous to aquatic birds, whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine animals, said Huang Shu-ting (黃蜀婷), president of a bird-watching club.
“Today it is a red-breasted merganser, but tomorrow it could be a dolphin, turtle or other birds,” she said.
Fishing and aquaculture industries are major sources of the plastic waste that gets into the ocean, as fishers often lose or discard old nets and fishing lines. That waste often washes ashore, or marine life becomes entangled in it. Waste from single-use plastic consumer products also gets into the ocean after being improperly discarded or blown away from landfills.
The Ministry of Environment works with environmental organizations and coastal management authorities to lead beach cleanups and monitor waste along the coast. Cleanups are also organized by volunteer initiatives such as Taiwan National Clean Up Day, which has run annually since 2017. Such programs are good, but as they are infrequent, they cannot keep pace with the rapid accumulation of waste. The Ocean Cleanup Web site says that about 80 percent of plastic marine waste ends up ashore within a month of washing out to sea.
Banning production of plastic would eliminate plastic waste, but it is simply not feasible to live without any form of plastic in the modern world. At best, governments could mandate the use of alternatives such as bamboo or metal where possible, or plastics that are recyclable or biodegradable. It could also subsidize research into alternatives to commonly used plastics. Those changes would take time, and in the meantime plastics continue to be a threat to marine life. Plastic waste also affects human health when microplastics enter the food chain. That is a major concern, especially given Taiwan’s low birthrate, as microplastics can disrupt the reproductive system by reducing sperm count and motility, impairing ovulation, and causing placental dysfunction.
One solution to keep pace with the accumulation of marine waste is to deploy ocean-cleaning robots. Taiwanese ocean-cleanup initiative Azure Alliance proved the potential for such a solution when it tested its cleanup vessel the Azure Fighter in 2019. The remote-controlled vessel, which is in its third iteration, can collect more than 52 tonnes of waste in a year. The Azure Fighter could be modified to operate on its own using artificial intelligence (AI), which has been demonstrated by Hong Kong-based company Open Ocean Engineering with its AI-powered robot Clearbot. The study “Type and quantity of coastal debris pollution in Taiwan: A 12-year nationwide assessment using citizen science data,” published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin in October 2018, estimated that between October 2004 and December 2016, 500 tonnes to 1,000 tonnes of waste gathered on Taiwan’s coastline.
The government could help subsidize the mass production of ocean cleanup vessels and contract a Taiwanese manufacturer to develop the AI software. Even if only a few dozen robots were operating at any given time, it could greatly bolster the efforts of human volunteers, and the Ministry of Environment could even establish a division to monitor and clean beaches. A three-pronged strategy of reducing nonbiodegradable plastic production, recovering plastic waste and ramping up recycling of plastics could position Taiwan to be a regional leader on tackling marine waste. Such crucial efforts could save marine life and improve human health.
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