Environmentalists on Wednesday called on the government to integrate marine survey data to establish a government database to reduce the environmental impact of offshore development projects.
The government in 2019 encouraged people to explore the sea and promulgated the Oceans Basic Act (海洋基本法), aiming to make the nation “a high-quality marine country that is ecological, safe and prosperous.”
However, the nation’s surrounding marine environment is endangered by the development of many tourism, fisheries and offshore wind farm projects, the Chinese-language online media Environmental Information Center quoted Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association secretary-general Kuo Hung-yi (郭鴻儀) as saying on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Science and Technology has an Ocean Data Bank, which holds data contributed by researchers from different universities, but the Ocean Affairs Council (OAC) has yet to establish its own database.
The OAC last year proposed a long-term project on surveying marine environment and ecology, but the project was rejected by the National Development Council (NDC), Kuo said.
A comprehensive ecological survey is needed before any offshore development starts, he said, calling on the government to establish a marine database soon.
The sustainable use of marine resources is predicated on a continued application of scientific data on a long-term basis, the center quoted Pei Jai-chyi (裴家騏), a professor at the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, as saying.
However, most of the nation’s existing ocean surveys were the results of short-term and small-scale projects, which are unable to reflect the changes in animal populations over a longer period, he said.
The government should continue to support science-based surveys of the nation’s marine environment to have a better understanding of the number and distribution of marine animals, and adjust its policy accordingly, Pei said.
It should announce guidelines for energy developers to survey marine ecology, so as to improve the quality of data provided by developers during environmental impact assessment processes and to protect Taiwanese humpback dolphins living off the nation’s west coast, National Taiwan University associate professor of veterinary medicine Yang Wei-cheng (楊瑋誠) was quoted as saying.
The NDC has budgeted more than NT$2.63 billion (US$94.5 million) for the “Salute to the seas — ocean cleanup and opening program,” association researcher Kuo Chia-wen (郭佳雯) was quoted as saying, but only NT$100 million — NT$10 million less than last year — was allocated to the OAC’s National Academy of Marine Research to conduct marine surveys.
The OAC needs to improve its efforts in marine research and conservation, and maritime law enforcement, the center quoted Taiwan Environmental Information Association secretary-general Chen Juei-pin (陳瑞賓) as saying.
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