Conservationists in Chiayi County have successfully bred more than 600 endangered tri-spine horseshoe crabs, setting a nationwide record.
Chiayi County Commissioner Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁) and local officials on Tuesday visited the rearing facility in Budai Township (布袋) to commend the effort led by the Chiayi County Ecological Conservation Association.
After many years absent from the township’s Haomeiliao Wetland (好美寮溼地), the county government in 2019 conducted a survey of the juvenile horseshoe crab population, finding a total of just 14 in two months, Weng said.
Photo provoided by the Chiayi County Government
The living fossil scientifically known as Tachypleus tridentatus has been in decline worldwide, and in 2019 was upgraded to endangered status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The horseshoe crabs’ survival is at risk due to overfishing, marine pollution, habitat destruction and warming oceans, as they cannot regulate their body temperature.
In Taiwan, where they were once abundant, juvenile horseshoe crabs can now only be spotted regularly in Kinmen and Penghu counties.
Horseshoe crabs — which are thought to be more closely related to spiders and scorpions than to crabs — lay their eggs in nurseries on sandy beaches.
After hatching, the larvae swim in the ocean for about six days before settling in shallow intertidal waters, where they feed at low tide.
They mature after about two years, at which point they move a few kilometers offshore until it is time to reproduce.
It was once difficult to find adults for breeding, and when they do mate, not many survive into adulthood, association secretary-general Su Yin-tien (蘇銀添) said.
To increase the population, the county government this year notified fishers about the situation, urging them to send any adults of the species they catch to the association, Su said.
Access to more breeding adults, as well as years of conservation experience, allowed the association to facilitate the mating, which produced more than 600 viable juveniles, an exceedingly rare achievement, he said.
After maturing for about two years, some would be released into a suitable wetland area, while the remaining horseshoe crabs would be kept for observation or sent to schools, he added.
The county is to build a horseshoe crab conservation center, for which designs have been completed and a tender should be issued late this year, he said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS