A children's choir from Penghu sang their way to third place in the recent Reef Check Singing Contest, using their song to raise awareness about protecting the ocean and coral reefs.
The contest was sponsored by the US-based Reef Check Foundation, an international non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of coral and rocky reefs.
The foundation has since 1997 been involved in investigating the conditions of coral reefs in more than 80 countries, said Allen Chen (陳昭倫), an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica's Biodiversity Research Center.
“In the past, reef checks were conducted by the government, but because the work requires a lot of volunteers, this year two not-for-profit organizations — the Taiwanese Association for Marine Environmental Education and the Taiwan Environmental Information Association — will jointly host the activity,” Chen said.
Academia Sinica will also co-fund the reef checks, Chen said.
The Reef Check Singing Contest was part of the 2008 International Year of the Reef program, a global campaign to raise awareness about the importance of coral reefs, threats to their survival and coral reef protection.
Corals are organisms that extract calcium from seawater and use it to create hardened structures; they provide homes and shelter for thousands of other species in the ocean.
“In past coral checks, we have found four major problems associated with the ocean that may threaten the sustainability of coral reefs, namely overfishing, overdevelopment of coastlines, pollution and climate change,” Chen said.
Because of climate change, coral bleaching — or discoloration of corals, which is a sign that the organism is under environmental stress that could lead to death — and ocean acidification, which prevents sea organisms from forming calcium-based structures, have been found, he said.
“If the acidification worsens, corals would in the future be limp, and clams and oysters would have no shells,” he said.
Asked how her students won the hearts of the judges, Penghu County Chung Shing Elementary School (中興國小) teacher Anna Chang (張玳伶) said that before they recorded the competition video, she had shown her students photographs of the Penghu coastline 10 years ago compared with how it looks now.
“I asked the children to hold that in mind, and sing in ways that would encourage people to want to protect and love the ocean,” she said.
Children are a good medium with which to spread the message, as not only are their voices pure and uncontaminated, “when they go home, they tell their parents about the importance of protecting the ocean,” she said.
Foreign travelers entering Taiwan on a short layover via Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport are receiving NT$600 gift vouchers from yesterday, the Tourism Administration said, adding that it hopes the incentive would boost tourism consumption at the airport. The program, which allows travelers holding non-Taiwan passports who enter the country during a layover of up to 24 hours to claim a voucher, aims to promote attractions at the airport, the agency said in a statement on Friday. To participate, travelers must sign up on the campaign Web site, the agency said. They can then present their passport and boarding pass for their connecting international
Temperatures in northern Taiwan are forecast to reach as high as 30°C today, as an ongoing northeasterly seasonal wind system weakens, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. CWA forecaster Tseng Chao-cheng (曾昭誠) said yesterday that with the seasonal wind system weakening, warmer easterly winds would boost the temperature today. Daytime temperatures in northern Taiwan and Yilan County are expected to range from 28°C to 30°C today, up about 3°C from yesterday, Tseng said. According to the CWA, temperature highs in central and southern Taiwan could stay stable. However, the weather is expected to turn cooler starting tonight as the northeasterly wind system strengthens again
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Taiwan sweltered through its hottest October on record, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, the latest in a string of global temperature records. The main island endured its highest average temperature since 1950, CWA forecaster Liu Pei-teng said. Temperatures the world over have soared in recent years as human-induced climate change contributes to ever more erratic weather patterns. Taiwan’s average temperature was 27.381°C as of Thursday, Liu said. Liu said the average could slip 0.1°C by the end of yesterday, but it would still be higher than the previous record of 27.009°C in 2016. "The temperature only started lowering around Oct. 18 or 19
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