Taitung Skipper Caught With Whale Shark Catch

December 9, 2007

Release from: China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Coast guard officers boarded a fishing boat Friday night, discovering a victim of illegal hunting, a whale shark, which had been cut up into several parts, a spokesman for the Eastern Coastal Patrol Office (ECPO) said Saturday in Taitung County.

Although whale sharks are not on the list of protected animals in Taiwan, the Fisheries Agency began in 2001 to control the number of whale sharks that could be caught after discovering that whale shark numbers off the island's eastern coast had dropped dramatically due to overhunting.

In that year, an annual quota was set, which has since undergone review and adjustment by the agency every year. This year, the whale shark hunting quota was set at 30, or half the level for 2006.

The spokesman said that the 2007 quota was reached in July. On Nov. 1, a ban on whale shark hunting took effect, and it will remain in place until the end of the year, he noted. The skipper of the fishing boat, which operates out of the Fukang fishing port in the eastern county of Taitung, confessed to illegal whale shark hunting, the spokesman said, adding that the case has been handed over to local prosecutors.