A multi-purpose, sea-cleaning vessel is next month to begin operating in the Port of Keelung to remove liquid and solid waste, the Taiwan International Port Corp (TIAC) said on Friday last week.
The state-run port company said that it spent NT$19.11 million (US$652,775) on the vessel, which was delivered from France in June, to improve its ability to keep the port’s waters clean.
Marine pollution at the port mainly comes from the sewage system, TIAC said.
TIAC dispatches personnel twice a day to scoop up marine waste, with more than 400kg collected on some days, it said.
The new ship is to replace those operations, it said.
With the collection of plastic, hydrocarbons, jellyfish, plants, sewage and other floating waste, the daily processing volume would increase to between 500kg and 800kg, it said.
The vessel has dual-flow technology that allows clean water to be evacuated as water polluted with hydrocarbons is stored, it said.
“Suppose there is an oil spill. The vessel’s cleaning rate of 105m3 per hour would dramatically reduce the use of absorbent cotton and lower the effects on the marine ecosystem,” TIAC chief secretary for the Port of Keelung Chen Shih-hung (陳世鴻) said.
The vessel would also support essential services at the port, including towing, firefighting, dock cleaning, and transporting equipment and personnel, Chen said.
TIAC is testing the vessel’s functions and training personnel to operate it from next month, he said.
TIAC plans to import a second multi-service, sea-cleaning vessel next year to replace ships used by port maintenance personnel, Chen said.
Like garbage trucks, they would broadcast music to warn other vessels that they need to avoid interfering with their operations, Chen added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater