Trash — most of it from China — that has washed up in the South Penghu Marine National Park might have to remain where it is during the northeast monsoon season, as it has accumulated faster than volunteers can remove it, officials said on Monday.
The park consists of four main islets and their surrounding waters in the south of Penghu County: Dongji (東吉), Siji (西吉), Dongyuping (東嶼坪) and Siyuping (西嶼坪).
Their steep topography paired with seasonal winds and waves make it difficult to remove marine waste, so the Marine National Park Headquarters, which manages the park, sets aside funds every year to facilitate cleanup.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the headquarters this year sought help from Penghu residents, offering NT$1,500 a day plus accommodation.
There was an enthusiastic response from people looking to escape a level 3 COVID-19 alert, it said, adding that they collected trash in excess of expectations, removing more than 100 tonnes.
For Dongyuping and Siyuping, the headquarters set aside NT$3 million (US$106,564), with 40 tonnes of trash removed, while NT$7 million was set aside for Dongji and Siji.
Cleanup of Dongji and Siji was to be completed by the beginning of this month, but the headquarters said that the job is still only about halfway done.
It attributed the delay to pandemic restrictions, as Dongji closed entry to the islet until July 13, pushing back the start of work by two weeks.
There are about a dozen people on Dongji collecting refuse in bags, consolidating them and sending them on boats to Kaohsiung to be incinerated, contractors said.
They have already cleared about 50 tonnes and plan to clear the remaining 50 tonnes by the end of the month, they said.
However, with the resurgence of the northeast monsoon, even more trash — more than 70 percent of which originates from China — is to float in by next year, restarting the entire process, contractors said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS