A coast guard ship is shepherding a Taiwanese fishing boat on its voyage home, officials said yesterday, after the boat's captain allegedly survived being pushed overboard by his Indonesian crew.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said the captain of the Pingtung-based fishing boat, Chen Wen-chen (陳文鎮), survived in the water for more than 24 hours by holding onto a buoy on one of the boat's fishing nets.
SURPRISE DISCOVERY
The CGA said eight Indonesian crewmen, who had been hired by Chen after he sailed the boat alone from Taiwan, discovered that he was still alive when they pulled the net in to check on the catch.
The coast guard quoted Chen as saying the crewmen decided to let him live because none of them were able to pilot the boat.
SOS
The CGA said it received a wire from the crew last Friday saying the boat was in danger because Chen was missing and no one else could pilot the boat.
As the CGA prepared to launch a rescue operation, it was reported that Chen had been found alive and that he was operating the boat, despite being weakened by his ordeal.
The boat was more than 600 nautical miles (1,111km) away from Taiwan, in waters to the east of the Philippines, when the crew asked for help last Friday.
RENDEZVOUS
CGA spokesman Teng Wen-ming (鄧文明) told reporters that a coast guard vessel met up with the fishing boat yesterday morning, and that it was guarding the boat and Chen on the voyage home.
Teng said the Indonesian crewmen are being brought to Taiwan.
"The reason why the Indonesian crewmen pushed Chen into the water will be established when they are in Taiwan," he said.
He said the boat was expected to arrive in Taiwan tomorrow.
Chen left Taiwan on July 30 to fish in the South Pacific.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
RSS