A Taitung fisherman caught an unusual-looking “hunchback” sea turtle in waters off the nation’s southeast coast on Wednesday.
The fisherman, Tien Cheng-yung (田秤勇), said he was fishing in waters off Pingtung and Taitung counties when he unexpectedly pulled up a heavy turtle that had an unusually shaped shell.
Tien said his first thought was: “Why does it look like this?”
Photo: CNA
He said he had unintentionally caught turtles before, but had never seen one with a humped shell.
Tien said he shot a video of the creature with the humped back and then released it back into the sea.
When he showed the video to other veteran fishermen on Thursday, they were all amazed and said it was the first time they had seen a hunchback turtle, Tien said.
A photo of the turtle showed its shell shaped like a traditional Chinese farmer’s hat.
Cheng I-jiunn (程一駿), a marine biology professor at National Taiwan Ocean University, said it appeared from the photo to be a regular green sea turtle that had probably been raised in captivity or on a farm and was later abandoned or had escaped.
The unusual shape of its shell might have resulted from living in a small space, which would have forced the turtle to grow upward, making it appear to be hunchbacked, he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS