The skipper of a Taiwanese fishing boat urged local fishermen to shy away from waters near the northernmost island of the Philippines to avoid being detained.
Chou-Huang Ke-sheng (
The 43.75-tonne Haihung was on its way home when a 450-tonne white Philippine vessel began chasing it around 11am Monday, Chou-Huang said.
The Haihung lost contact with the Pingtung Fishery Association-operated radio station at one point and didn't resume contact until 8pm on Monday.
Chou-Huang said the Philippine vessel had opened fire but didn't hit his boat during the hot pursuit.
"My boat managed to escape the Philippine vessel mainly because it made an emergency detour from the Philippine island," he said.
According to the skipper, the Philippine vessel was manned by customs officers.
Many Pingtung fishing boats have cooperated with the private Philippine fishing sector through brokerage houses in order to operate in waters which overlap the economic zones of Taiwan and the Philippines.
If a Taiwanese fishing boat is detained by Philippine authorities, the Taiwanese shipowner and the brokerage house each pay for half of the fine for the ship's release.
Those which have not joined the cooperative project have to pay the fines on their own.
The period from mid-April through mid-July is the peak season for catching Black Tuna.
During the season, hundreds of fishing boats from Pingtung and Kaohsiung operate in fishing grounds which overlap the economic zones of Taiwan and the Philippines near the Bashi Channel and the Philippine Sea.
Philippine fishing authorities have begun to pay close attention to Taiwanese fishing boats ever since some Pingtung fishermen made a fortune from sales of their Black Tuna catches last year, fishery sources said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS