Hundreds of Tainan County fishermen staged a demonstration outside the Council of Agriculture (COA) to protest a decision allowing pair trawlers in waters along the county’s coastline, saying that it threatens fish stocks in the area.
Pair trawlers are large fishing boats that drag trawl nets under the water as they move forward.
To prevent exhaustion of offshore fish stocks, the use of pair trawlers within 12 nautical miles (22.2km) of shore has been banned since 1999.
However, apparently to conduct research on fish stocks, the COA’s Fisheries Agency began allowing 42 trawlers to trawl as close as 3 nautical miles from the shores of Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties at the end of last year. The project runs until next August.
“If this is for research purposes, allowing two trawlers would be enough. Why 42?” asked Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智), who joined the protesters in Taipei. “The 42 trawlers are not only threatening fish stocks, but also the ecology on the sea bed because they do bottom trawling.”
At the fishing port in Jiangjyun Township (將軍), Tainan County, the catch in June this year was only 40 percent of the catch a year earlier, while the catch in this month up to Sunday was only 25 percent of the catch for the same period last year, Su said.
“Europe, the US and Japan have all banned pair trawlers from near-shore fishing. We call on the COA to restore the ban immediately,” he said.
Showing a regular fishing net used by local fishermen and a trawl net, the fishermen said the trawl net posed a clear threat to fish stocks.
“The mesh size of this trawl net is about 1cm by 1cm, but the mesh size of the nets we normally use is at least 5cm by 5cm,” said Chiu Ching-huei (邱清輝), a fisherman from Jiangjyun. “The nets we use allow smaller fish to escape, while the trawl net catches just about everything it encounters.”
Pouring a box of fish from a pair trawler catch onto the ground, the fishermen counted the losses.
“Look at this cutlassfish, it would sell for NT$200 per kilogram as an adult; and this white pomfret would sell for NT$1,000 per kilogram,” fisherman Wu Lien-ko (吳連可) said, holding up the juvenile fish. “But all these will now be used to feed pigs or farm-raised fish for NT$4 a kilogram.”
“The research should be suspended right away until our questions are answered,” Wu said.
Fisheries Agency director-general James Sha (沙志一) met the protesters, but refused to suspend the project.
“The project will go ahead as planned, and what the fishermen said today will be used later during our evaluation of the project,” he said.
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