Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 賴亮名/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
GREENPEACE HAS CRITICIZED the Fisheries Agency, accusing the Fisheries Agency of allowing for illegal shark finning in a restricted area of the northern Pacific Sea.
The area in question is enclosed and is supposed to be used by vessels to collect scientific data. According to the Fisheries Agency, trial access to the area was allowed for some vessels because fishing industry represented called for the lifting of seasonal bans. The Fisheries Agency still claims that measures to prevent shark fishing, including of endangered species, were in place.
However, Greenpeace has ten hours of footage showing four Taiwan-flagged longliner vessels in the area. The footage is from between August 4th and August 10th of last year and shows 39 sharks being caught by the vessels. According to Greenpeace, the footage shows that the shark fishing was deliberate behavior.
The Fisheries Agency has accused Greenpeace of misunderstanding the purpose of the area designation. Either way, it should be self-apparent that issues of shark fishing continue face Taiwan, as in that shark fin is still readily available for sale in many parts of Taiwan.
Greenpeace has called on the Fisheries Agency to establish further monitoring mechanisms for fishing, in carrying out inspections, using an electronic monitoring system, and publishing data tracking the movements of vessels. At the same time, it is to be seen whether the Fisheries Agency takes any action on this.
In particular, illegal fishing is often thought to dovetail with labor abuses on fishing vessels. International bodies have, as such, sought to crack down on the two issues in tandem. This is often referred to as “Illegal, underreported, and unregulated” fishing, or “IUU” in shorthand.
It proves hard to crack down on IUU, however, when transshipment often occurs–that is, vessels have fish, personnel, and equipment shipped back to shore through other vessels. Deep-water fishing vessels often do not return to shore for months or years at a time.
Nevertheless, the Fisheries Agency has historically been seen as siding with the fishing industry rather than with criticisms of Taiwan from international human rights groups, labor rights groups, it environmental groups. The Fisheries Agency seems to see it as its mandate to promote the Taiwanese fishing agency rather than to call it to account for labor abuses.
This can be seen in the Fisheries Agency’s reaction to when Taiwan’s fishing industry has come under fire for labor abuses, such as when Taiwanese fish was listed on US Department of Labor’s list of goods produced by forced labor or when Taiwan’s fishing industry was issued a “Yellow Card” by the European Union. For example, the Fisheries Agency claimed that there had been confusion regarding the use of forced labor by China in Xinjiang with regards to how Taiwanese fish came under fire for labor abuses.
Across the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese government has leaned hard into efforts to crack down on shark finning through high-profile campaigns featuring Chinese entertainers. At the same time, issues of shark meat for sale in China continue, at times due to Chinese authorities turning a blind eye to such practices.
Taiwan, interestingly, has not seen such campaigns, featuring high-profile entertainers or otherwise, from the government. This is probably due to a lack of international attention on Taiwan in a way that has not resulted in pressure to crack down on shark finning. If so, however, the Fisheries Agency is more likely to simply try to get rid of international criticisms facing Taiwan without taking substantive action on the matter. Even as Taiwan generally tries to improve its international standing, when Taiwan tries to defend industry at the expense of human rights, the government’s priorities are elsewhere.
This has particularly been true of Taiwan’s fishing industry, in which the government continues to drag its feet on tracking of fishing vessels, as well as WiFi for fishermen–in spite of that fishermen are cut off from their families for years at the time, to the extent that they are even unable to confirm if their families are being paid for their work. Taiwan’s actions on shark finning may not be better.