Wed, Sep 14, 2011 page2

• Greenpeace accuses Fisheries Agency of inaction

  • By Lee I-Chia / Staff Reporter
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  Taiwanese members of Greenpeace unfurled a banner in front of the legislature yesterday morning calling on lawmakers to carefully review the Fisheries Agency’s budget in their next session so that policies leading to overfishing can be avoided.

  As part of the protest, a Greenpeace member dressed in a suit to represent an agency official stood in a pile of money bills and held up a large paperboard fish skeleton.

  The group said the act symbolized the agency, which is under the Council of Agriculture, using a lot of taxpayers’ money for its budget, but leaving the ocean with no fish because of its poor deep-water fishing policies.

  

  A Taiwanese member of Greenpeace holds a placard of a fish skeleton yesterday during a protest outside the legislature in Taipei. Greenpace says Taiwan is a key player in the global tuna-fishing industry, but the Fisheries Agency has helped facilitate the depletion of tuna resources over the past decade instead of helping to conserve them.

  Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

  “The Fisheries Agency’s budge for subsidizing distant water fishing comes from the taxes, so the legislators should be responsible for overseeing how the agency uses the money and make sure the money isn’t spent on exhausting ocean resources,” Taiwan Greenpeace oceans campaigner Kao Yu-fen (高于棻) said.

  With more than 1,950 fishing boats in the west central Pacific, Taiwan is one of the most important players in the region, but the Fisheries Agency has always been passive in the area’s fishing commission when discussing constraints on overfishing to preserve sustainable ocean resources, the group said.

  Kao said ocean resources are rapidly being exhausted.

  For example, only one species of tuna was listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species last year, but three species made it onto this year’s list, he said.

  The group called on the agency to explain its budget allocations to the public and promote the idea of marine reserves and reducing tuna quotas by 50 percent at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting this year.

  Data from the agency show tuna catches contributed to 90 percent of the total value of Taiwan’s distant fishing, Kao said, adding that most of the tuna caught were consumed in other countries.

  The group said that Greenpeace Japan launched a Sustainable Seafood campaign earlier this year, and the results of a poll it commissioned of the Japanese public showed that 68 percent of Japanese consumers want labeling for endangered or vulnerable fish species so they can make more informed choices when purchasing fish.

  Although Taiwan is not the biggest consumer of tuna in the region, its tuna fleets should be held responsible for their large role in exhausting ocean resources, Kao said.

  Taiwan’s fishing industry would be blamed by consumers globally if overfishing continues, Kao said.

  The Greenpeace protesters yesteray also called on lawmakers to be strict when reviewing the Fisheries Agency’s budget to help protect public’s right to sustainable ocean resources.
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