Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/14
By: Yang Shu-min and Kuo Chung-han
Taipei, April 14 (CNA) Greenpeace Taiwan (GPT) released a report on Taiwan’s
fisheries on Thursday, suspecting the Fisheries Agency’s willingness and capability to punish illegal shark finning and claiming rampant labor and human rights abuses on its fishing boats.
Greenpeace East Asia uncovered 16 illegal cases of shark finning in three ports in Yilan, Pingtung and Kaohsiung in a three-month investigation in the second half of 2015, but the Fisheries Agency (FA) only found 18 illegal cases in the entirety of 2015, GPT Ocean Campaigner Yen Ning (顏寧) said in Chinese that day.
She also said Greenpeace investigators did not see any Coast Guard or FA officers on the scene when they found the 16 cases from August-October 2015.
In response to Yen’s claim, Deputy Director Huang Hung-yen (黃鴻燕) of the Fisheries Agency told reporters on the phone that the agency has more than 100 employees monitoring illegal shark finning. [FULL STORY]