The Fisheries Agency yesterday defended revisions to policies on coral harvesting, saying it has adopted stringent measures to ensure sustainable growth, despite a local media report alleging that the agency had eased restrictions.
A report in the Saturday edition of the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) said the agency relaxed the regulations on licenses for coral harvesting boats so that the permits can be inherited, transferred or switched to a new ship in spite of the stance of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) against trade in corals.
CITES meetings have repeatedly discussed restricting trade in red coral, which the Liberty Times said is a favorite souvenir among Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The newspaper quoted Yen Ning (顏寧), an ocean campaigner from Greenpeace East Asia, as saying that the Taiwanese coral market is being swamped with Chinese buyers since China has banned the collection and illegal sales of red coral, allowing only transactions with certificates of origin.
“Allowing coral fishing boats permits to be transferred or inherited is outrageous and comparable to selling our ancestral treasures to China,” the organization said.
According to Allen Chen (陳昭倫), an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center, the rate of growth of red coral was even slower than Hermatypic coral closer to shore.
With a growth rate of 0.24 to 1.32mm per year, further destruction of red coral would be disastrous for Taiwan’s sustainability of fishing as red coral is an important habitat for fish, shrimps and shellfish, the Liberty Times report quoted Chen as saying.
The Fisheries Agency said that its revisions were made in consideration of coral harvesting boats, most of which are part of a family business in which skippers and owners are related by blood or marriage.
The new regulations allow inheritance and transfers between those relatives, it said.
Owners or inheritors can build new ships only if their old ones are damaged or sunk due to unavoidable events, though the capacity of the new ships must be reduced by 10 percent.
While the agency acknowledged harvesting areas were increased, it said that the total haul allowed per year has been cut by half, from 12 tonnes to 6 tonnes.
Taiwan’s coral harvesting focuses on deep sea precious gem corals, particularly the momo, aka, shiro and miss varieties, instead of shallow sea reef-building corals, the agency said.
While shallow-sea coral regenerates, it does so very slowly.
The agency said that it adopted an early-warning system in 2009 that restricts harvesting to five areas deeper than 100m to avoid affecting shallow coral ecology.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua, Yang Yi-min and Yang Ya-min
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