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Kenting villagers vow to save their coral reef
14th April 2003
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By Cathy Chou, TAIPEI, Taiwan,
The China Post
Fishermen and hotel operators in south Taiwan's Kenting vowed to preserve the island's endangered coral reef by patrolling the shores.
Kenting's coral reef suffers from sedimentation, industrial waste and poaching that decreases the tropical fish inhabiting the area.
Conditions of the coral reef worsened after an oil spill from the Greek-registered ship Amargo, which occured in Kenting waters in 2001.
The withering of the coral reef has harmed the local tourism industry, which was already wobbling during the economic downturn.
To return the reef and the tourism in Kenting to its original condition, over 100 local residents formed an association last March to conduct three tasks: patrolling for poachers, cleaning the seasides and upgrading the service quality at tourist attractions.
Cheng Ming-hsiou, a researcher at the Academia Sinica and an organizer of the association, said the members are likely to revive the coral reef in less than three years.
Currently the members of the association only include the residents near the Houpi Lagoon, but Cheng plans to invite people from other parts Kenting to participate in the project in the future.
The association is requesting that the government set up a sanctuary that prohibits every kind of fishing.
Once the sanctuary is launched, the volunteers will have more grounds to stop people from fishing in the sea, Cheng said, adding that civilians can be much more effective in catching poachers than the government.
One of the missions the volunteers have been working on is to preserve collector sea urchins inhabiting the coral reefs and rocky areas.
Collector urchins are less than 12 centimeters long with tentacles that are often covered with seaweed and garbage. Such looks caused them to be nicknamed "horsedoodies urchin" in Chinese.
Seaweed is a major food source for the collector urchin. The species play an indirect hand in preserving the coral reefs by consuming the seaweed, which grows on the reefs and, when they grow unchecked, could choke the coral to death.
The reproductive glands of the collector urchin are seen as a gourmet among Japanese tourists. In south Taiwan the collector urchin is priced at NT$65 each, while in the north, where the urchin is scarce, the price doubles to NT$150 each.
The high price for the collector urchins drove local fishermen to overfish them, causing the number of urchins in the area to drop drastically over the years.
Cheng said an average of 19 collector urchins could be found in each square meter of seawater back in 1984. "Now divers are lucky to find two," he lamented.
To save the urchins, Cheng and his fellow volunteers visited the Kenting fishermen, trying to convince them that there is profit in preserving the animal.
The fishermen were usually willing to stop fishing for the urchins and even join in the volunteer work after they were informed of how much money would be made when the tourists return to the preserved area, Cheng said.
When someone is caught fishing for the collector urchin, he or she would face an NT$15,000 fine from the Kenting National Park, Cheng said.
In the past the fishermen would catch the urchin in secret to escape the fine.
To stop such poaching, the volunteers began patroling the shores regularly. Villagers friendly to the campaign would also watch out for irregular activities along the coast.
Scholars at the National Chungshan University helped out in the volunteers' preservation work by dumping 10,000 collector urchins in the Houpi Lagoon and near the third nuclear power plant in 2002.
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