The Ocean Conservation Administration (OCA) yesterday said it needs more data to decide whether to protect megamouth sharks, after an animal protection group said fishing vessels have been catching the species without restrictions.
A drift net vessel this week caught six of the deep-water sharks over four consecutive days off the coast of Hualien County, the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
In 2018 and last year, another three vessels caught a total of 72 megamouth sharks, including 70 off Hualien and two off Yilan County, it wrote.
Photo provided by the Ocean Conservation Administration
As big as the protected whale sharks species, megamouth sharks are rarer, as only 226 have been documented since they were discovered and named in 1976, and 145 have been caught near Taiwan, EAST wrote.
Accusing the four vessels of purposely catching the sharks, the group urged the OCA and the Fisheries Agency to ban capturing the sharks, saying that the waters off the east coast have become a graveyard for the species due to government inaction.
The agencies said they need more data to decide whether to designate megamouth sharks as a protected species.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources lists the species under “least concern,” the OCA said.
In July last year, the agency formed a work group with the Fisheries Agency, the Coast Guard Administration, experts and civic groups to promote the stock assessment and conservation of megamouth sharks, the OCA said.
It said it would work with fishers to install devices on the sharks to track their migratory paths.
Promoting the conservation of cartilaginous fishes has been the agency’s task since its founding in 2018, it said, adding that it listed whale sharks and giant oceanic manta rays as protected species on June 1.
As it takes time to complete the legal process of granting a species protected status, the Fisheries Agency could first restrict vessels’ activities if it deems they are detrimental to a species, just as it had done with whale sharks, OCA senior specialist Ko Yung-chuan (柯勇全) said.
Designating a species as protected without solid scientific evidence risks creating conflicts and setting a poor standard, Ko said.
The Fisheries Agency in 2013 started requiring fishers to file reports when catching megamouth sharks, and 136 have been reported since then, Fisheries Regulation Division chief Liu Fu-sheng (劉福昇) said.
Fishers can trade the sharks after filing reports, Liu said.
The agency needs more evidence to impose any restrictions, he said, adding that it continues to participate in the OCA work group.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led