A sperm whale that was rescued off the coast of Chiayi County last week was found dead at sea yesterday, said the Coast Guard Administration, which was part of the effort to rescue the stranded whale.
Local fishermen discovered the carcass of the 15m-long whale on a shoal in an area south of Pachang Creek (八掌溪) estuary in the county, the coast guard said.
An examination of the carcass confirmed that it was the same sperm whale that had become stranded near the county’s shoreline on Oct. 15, the coast guard said.
Photo: Wu Shih-tsung, Taipei TIMES
A team of coast guard personnel and marine experts had released it back into the open sea the same day.
Wang Chien-ping (王建平), director of the Taiwan Cetacean Society and Marine Biology and Cetacean Research Center at National Cheng Kung University, said the whale might have been injured before it became stranded.
Authorities are now trying to tow the carcass to Chiayi’s Budai Harbor, after which it will be shipped to the research center in Tainan for an autopsy, Wang said.
Whales can become stranded for many reasons, including illness, injury, weather conditions and sonar disruption of their communication with others in their pod, marine experts said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS