More emphasis should be placed on the preservation of coral reefs off the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島), Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said on Wednesday.
Hsu made the remark after witnessing the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Marine National Park Headquarters and National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung.
The agreement aims to promote scientific research at the Dongsha Atoll Research Station, he said.
Photo courtesy of National Sun Yat-sen University
“We hope that the research will help Taiwan increase its knowledge of the sea and promote maritime culture, instead of simply promoting seafood culture,” Hsu said.
The coral reef near the islands is 200 to 4,000 years old, said station project director Keryea Soong (宋克義), who is also a professor at the university’s Department of Oceanography.
An adjacent seagrass bed is at least 80km2, more than 300 times the size of Taipei’s Daan Forest Park (大安森林公園), he said.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the station has published about 50 scientific papers on the coral reef over the past five years, Soong said.
It is also the only sea zone in the nation where whiptail stingrays and sharks can be seen, he said, adding that the area is also home to Coenobita rugosus, a type of land hermit crab.
Coral whitening can be observed from civilian airliners flying overhead, he added.
While the coral reef is not currently open to the public, Hsu pledged to promote ecotourism to the atoll and to increase the use of green energy on the island that houses the station.
That would be a great opportunity for Taiwan to give to the world, as the South China Sea is the “sentinel post” for seawater acidification, station researchers said.
Due to the rising acidification of seawater, the station might see an increase in visiting researchers, they said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS