Taiwan Pink Dolphin Beaches and Dies on the Coast at Tonghsiao

Archive photo of three Taiwan Pink Dolphins in the waters off Taichung County.



On Friday, September 25th a Taiwan Pink Dolphin was found beached at Sinpu in Tonghsiao township, Miaoli County. When coast guard officials arrived the dolphin was found to already be dead. The Matsu's Fish Conservation Union (MFCU) is making enquiries into the death. According newspaper reports it seems that netting and sickness may have played a part in the death. What follows are English translations, courtesy of Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, of three local media reports. The MFCU will be following events closely and will post updates on the death as they become available.


Her name was Mrs. T to the humans that knew her. She was one of the first Taiwan pink dolphins to be catalogued by researchers. She drowned in late September 2009; a victim of entanglement in fishing gear. There are less than 70 of her kind left. [Beached Taiwan Pink Dolphin at Sinpu in Tonghsiao township, Miaoli County, Taiwan 25 September 2009:- Photo Coast Guard Administration]


United Daily News , 28 September 2009
Dolphin’s Death Three Days Ago: Drowning
Reporter Yu Wunwun

Three days ago a beached Chinese White Dolphin was found dead on the shores of the Sinpu fishing port, Tongsiao township, Miaoli County. The autopsy report by the Chiayi University and The National Museum of Natural Science is out and this poor white dolphin was already weak and had many illnesses, and its neck had been entangled in fishing nets and had serious scars; the main cause of death was “drowning, the aorta of the left ventricle was bloody and tangled, and had infectious pneumonia in its pleura.

Researchers said this animal weighed about 300 kilograms, an adult, but only 248 cm, it was thought that because the animal was very weak and had many sicknesses, and had been caught in a fishnet which wrapped around its neck, it had ingested a lot of sea water, as from the dissection it was discovered that a lot of seawater was in the animals trachea, and bubbles in its lungs. The Science Museum will make a specimen from the animal.


United Daily News, 26 September 2009
Beached Rare Chinese White Dolphin Discovered Dead on the Sandy Beach of Tongsiao Miaoli
Reported and photographed by Hu Pongsheng

Yesterday in the early morning a Chinese White Dolphin beached on the shores of the Sinpu Fishing Port, Tongsiao Township, Miaoli County. By the time the coast guard officials arrived on the scene the white dolphin was already dead. The Chinese White Dolphin is a Critically Endangered rare species of animal of which there are only about 100 in the coastal waters of western Taiwan.

This White Dolphins tail fin has many gashes and a fisher [who was on the scene] adamantly insisted that the animal’s head and tail had been tangled in fishing nets, but Yang Weicheng [Jack Yang, former student of CC Chou and LS Chou], assistant professor at Chiayi University did the dissection he suspected that the animal’s respiratory tract was infected, so the exact cause will have to await the examination report.

The National Museum of Natural Science said that after the dissection they will make the skeleton into a display specimen.

Yesterday morning at 7 am a fisher, Huang Yonghua discovered the beached white dolphin on the shore in front of the inspection station at the Sinpu Fishing Port, when the coast guard arrived in response to the report the white dolphin was already not breathing.

Huang Yonghua said when they go to sea to fish sometimes they will come across a group of 3-5 white dolphins swimming in the area and the beached dolphin was one of them. Recently there are often trawlers that come in close to the shores of Tongsiao Township violating the laws that prohibit operations within three nautical miles from shore – he suspects the murderer of the dolphin was a trawler.

“Wow, I’ve never seen a white dolphin!” said a bystander among the people who came to see the animal that was carried to the inspection station. This white dolphin was about 2.6 meters long and fishers estimated it weighed around 300 kilograms. Although it was already dead the coast guard officials nevertheless carefully sprayed water to decrease its temperature and would deliver it to the National Science of Natural Science at noon.

Yang Weicheng said the animal was a male and being rather skinny judged that it was malnourished. Upon dissection he found the respiratory tract was infected and swollen and suspects a bacterial infection.

The number of white dolphins is very small and there are few instances of their beaching. According to the Taiwan Cetacean Society’s secretary general Li Minghua from 1995 until today white dolphin’s recorded beachings are five for Jinmen and before yesterday’s only three for Taiwan itself – Tongsiao, Tainan and Taoyuan all have records of beachings.

Professor at National Taiwan University Chou Liansiang said there are only about one hundred in the population of Chinese White Dolphins along Taiwan’s west coast, and the populations along mainland China’s Pearl River, Hong Kong and so on number around 1500.

Backgrounder: Mastus Fish The Chinese White Dolphin is extremely rare. In early days academics and officials had little in the way of research data, only the fishers had seen the animals and spread rumours of its existence which led to its aura of mystery. When first born it is black, turning to grey in its youth and finally turns pink as an adult, hence its other name “pink dolphin”.

Because it appears along the west coast of Taiwan around the time of Matsu’s birthday, so the the fishers call it “Matsu’s fish” or “Matsu’s emissary” and consider it to be a sign of good fortune.


Liberty Times, 2009 09 25
White Dolphin Beaches and Dies on the Coast of Tonghsiao
Reported by Chen Jieliang in Miaoli

A fisher today discovered a beached white dolphin on the beach of Sinpu in Tonghsiao township, Miaoli County. Coast guard officials got to the scene to find the dolphin was not breathing and notified the Miaoli County government’s agriculture department which took the dolphin to the Science Museum in Taichung for dissection and to find the cause of death.


The fisher had discovered the dolphin on the beach about 200 meters from the Sinpu Safety Inspection Station during low tide and there was thus quite a distance from the water. By the time the coastguard official moved the dolphin to the inspection station it was already not breathing and there were only some indications of light wounds on the animal’s tail fin.


A person from the Taiwan Cetacean Society went to the scene and identified the animal as being an adult 260 cm in length but the cause of death would have to await the dissection. The coastguard official obtained ice and a truck and after the carcass was packed in ice it was taken to the science museum for dissection. The official said that last year there were three cases of beachings at Tongsiao but they were all of black dolphins.


See: Update: Taiwan Humpback Dolphin Beaches and Dies on the Coast of Tonghsiao

ETSSTAWG Chair sends a letter to COA Minister concerning the recent death of a Humpback Dolphin

Also see (2011):
Another Taiwan Pink Dolphin Death

Two Pink Dolphins found Dead in Hong Kong

Air quality worsens from Typhoon Morakot's dust

Wuchi Power Plant through the haze. Wuchi Power Plant at Taichung Harbour named the world's dirtiest coal-fired power plant by the prestigious science journal, Nature.

Dried sediment like this on the Jhoushuei River results in large quantities of fine dust.

The dusty floodplain at the confluence of the Jhoushuei and Chingshuei Rivers on the border of Nantou, Changhua and Yunlin Counties. The hills of Huben are clearly visible in the background.


The air quality in central Taiwan has always been a problem. The world's dirtiest coal-fired power plant in Wuchi, Taichung does its bit in greying central skies. Then, the Formosa Plastics plant at Mailiao and various other industrial parks all add to the toxic clouds. Add to that the burning of rice fields, garbage, ghost money and the exhausts of millions of scooters, cars and trucks and you have really scary air. But it doesn't stop there. You need to add dust, too. The lower courses of Taiwan's rivers tend to have very wide floodplains. This is due to the volume of water within rivers increasing dramatically during typhoons. With the building of dams and weirs on large rivers like the Jhoushuei and Chingshuei the greatly reduced flow of water results in the degradation of coastal wetlands and estuaries which are critical habitat for the endangered pink dolphins and causes the wide river floodplains to really dry out and dust becomes a major problem as a result...and when the Hushan Dam is completed it will only add to the problem. And this dust really helps push down the air quality index when in gets in the mix with all the other pollutants blowing around. Understandably its just got worse in the wake of Typhoon Morakot...much of the destruction and mud resulting from decades of poor land and water management.

See:
Air quality worsens from Typhoon Morakot's dust in the Taipei Times.

Typhoon Morakot: The Writing's on the Wall

River Dust

Ideologically Based Development: What’s the Point of Environmental Impact Assessment?

Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association's founding director standing in the haze in front of the world's dirtiest coal-fired powerplant in Wuchi, Taichung.


A recent article on the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association website titled Ideologically Based Development: What’s the Point of Environmental Impact Assessment? gives some valuable insight into the failings of environmental impact assessment in Taiwan and the type of mindset environmental groups come up against when dealing with the government department appointed to protect Taiwan's environment. Wild’s founding director, Robin Winkler, served a two-year term on the EIA commission.

All three effluent discharge proposals for Central Taiwan Science Park development will lead to pollution of humpback dolphin habitat

According to Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, plans for the "fourth phase" Central Taiwan Science Park development, which will include factories for the semiconductor, opto-electronics and precision machinery industries, will result in the discharge of factory pollutants into the estuaries feeding humpback dolphin habitat, or directly into the sea. Full report below:

In response to protest by residents, farmers and aquaculture farmers in Changhua County against planned effluent discharge from a major high-tech industrial development project planned for Erlin Township in Changhua County, Central Taiwan Science Park developers are now proposing to discharge the effluent into Yunlin County’s Jhuoshuei River instead, provoking an angry response from Yunlin residents, who are equally concerned about the pollution and say that there has been no public explanation of the project.

The fourth phase of the CTSP development is to be located in Erlin Township, Changhua County, nearby and upstream of agriculture and aquaculture farms. The science park’s Erlin Zone will initially include factories belonging to the semiconductor, opto-electronics and precision machinery industries.

The original plan was to discharge waste water from the complex into the Old Jhuoshuei River, which flows northwestwards and meets the sea at Fusing Township, Changhua County. However, Erlin Township and Fusing Township agriculture and aquaculture farmers downstream of the site protested against this, fearful of the impacts on their produce and their health.

Map: The three proposed discharge options

Last Monday (8 August) Changhua residents protested outside the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in Taipei during the fourth review meeting for the development. Protesters gathered behind a scene of rice, hay, grapes and dragon fruit strewn on the ground and held up banners and signs carrying slogans such as “Phase Four of the CTSP means terminal cancer”, “Who wants to eat green, toxic oysters?” and “The people of Erlin don’t want CTSP’s arsenic pollution”.

Photo: Changhua County residents protest at EPA, 10.8.09.

They warned that much of the food produced in and around Erlin is consumed in places such as Taipei, and that people around Taiwan would soon be eating poisoned food if this project goes ahead. Several said that they would not dare eat their own produce if it were irrigated with contaminated water from the CTSP factories.

Now Yunlin County residents face the same problem after the CTSP developers responded to the protest in Changhua County by suggested discharging pollutants southwards into Yunlin County’s Jhuoshuei River, instead.

“Yunlin County is a major rice producing area in Taiwan,” says Hua-Suei Chen of Yunlin County Environmental Protection Bureau, “and our rice is famous for being irrigated with water from the Jhuoshuei River. Hsilo Township [in Yunlin] is also Taiwan’s biggest vegetable and fruit supplying region, and the Jhuoshuei River feeds many of central Taiwan’s aquaculture ponds.”

A third alternative suggested by the developers is to pipe the effluent directly into the ocean. Some locals prefer this option to discharge into rivers. However, according to Wild at Heart lawyer Ya-Ying Tsai, all three options could have serious negative impacts on the environment.

“Discharging the effluent into either the Old Jhuoshuei River or the Jhuoshuei River has implications for the health of people in those areas and the safety of the food they produce and deliver to people in other parts of Taiwan. But dumping all that pollution into the sea is no ideal solution, either, because Taiwan’s critically endangered humpback dolphins are resident in the shallow coastal waters of western Taiwan. The rivers feeding into the estuaries are also important for maintaining the estuarine ecosystems, which provide food for the dolphins, too, so either way this effluent is bad news for them.”

But some say it is premature to be talking about where to discharge the effluent. Chemistry expert Herlin Hsieh of the Taipei-based non-governmental organization Taiwan Watch points out that the science park developers have failed even to provide a list of the chemical substances that will actually be used in, or discharged from, the science park.

“The chemicals listed in the developers’ documents as being prohibited or controlled include a lot of agricultural chemicals, not the types of chemicals used in the electronics industry,” says Hsieh. “The developers should list the names and volumes of chemicals to be used and discharged. If, during the environmental impact assessment process, we don’t even know what kinds of chemical substances will be used, what potential impacts can possibly be assessed?”

Hsieh recommends that models should be used to predict the impacts on ecology and farm production once the effluent from the Erlin Zone has contaminated irrigation water, and that this should be followed by a thorough health impact assessment. After this, he says, the public should be consulted about the standards and volumes of contaminated water they find acceptable, and compensated if it turns out after the companies start operating that the CTSP developers and the EPA were wrong about there being “no impact”.

According to protesters at the meeting last Monday, the developers had not held any public explanation meetings in the affected townships. Explanation meetings have now been scheduled to take place tomorrow (18 August) simultaneously in three different towns (Mailiao, Lunbei and Erlun), meaning that representatives from community and environmental groups cannot observe and monitor the quality of information provided or the level of transparency and public participation at the meetings, which is often a major point of contention in the EIA process.

Also see:
Leave Taiwan's future a clean Chuoshui River

Stop the CTSP Erlin Science Park; Protect Farmers, Fishermen and the Taiwan Humpback Dolphins.

Update: Stop the CTSP Erlin Science Park - Protect Farmers, Fishers and the Taiwan Humpback Dolphins.

Taiwan Humpback Dolphin Extinction Guaranteed by Ma and Wu’s Cat in the Hat Economics?

Black Friday for Erlin - The EPA once again strikes a blow against the environment

The saga of the CTSP Erlin Science Park and the Kuokuang Petrochemical Project

More protests at the EPA against the CTSP Erlin Science Park

Typhoon Morakot: The Writing's on the Wall

A huge landslide in the mountains of Kaohsiung County in southern Taiwan.


A government rescue helicopter flying through the the clear early morning skies before the afternoon rain and mist roll in.


As the fog of incapacitating shock clears, many people in central and southern Taiwan are becoming angry. Both of Taiwan's leading English newspapers carry criticisms of the government's top leadership in their editorials. The Taipei Times editorial is titled The price of incompetent leadership and the Taiwan News editorial is named Morakot's harm to Taiwan worsened by KMT hubris. None but the most mindless Chinese National Party (KMT or Kuomintang) supporter couldn't help but be angered by President Ma Ying-jeou's pathetic display of leadership during this national tragedy.

As the President and his men point fingers, it is everyone else but them to blame for how the response to Morakot and its aftermath have been mismanaged. Even the authoritarian and aloof leadership in China managed a better performance in the wake of last summer's devastating Sichuan earthquake.

Despite the lack of presidential leadership through this horrendous week the true spirit of compassion and love has shined through as a light above the devastation below, as people; be they rescuers, conscripted soldiers, volunteers or just a stranger offering a hand; have given their all through the mist, rain and mud, along treacherous slopes and through raging waters to save and bring comfort and hope...and lead the nation through this devastating tragedy.

It is also a time to reflect. We need to ask how much of this tragedy has resulted from decades of poor land and water management policies that set up some regions as ticking time bombs. As forests were stripped away leaving nothing to bind the soils and rocks of mountainsides together and uncontrolled and irresponsible construction became a standard, it turned many mountain areas into a tragedy waiting to happen. It is time to take a long hard look at land and water management policies and put an end to short-term "make-a-quick-buck while tearing up the countryside" type of policies and replace them with real sustainable land and water management policies that don't cost lives and billions of dollars in repairs when big typhoons blow in.

See today's Taiwan News editorial titled Taiwan must heed Morakot`s warning for more reflection on Taiwan's land and water management policies.

In Morakot's Wake

Typhoon Morakot has carved a path of destruction across the Philippines, Taiwan and China. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the victims of this tragedy, human and non-human alike. We wish strength to those who have watched their homes, villages and environment swept away. We pray for the safety of those involved in the rescue efforts as they make their way to Hsiaolin and other devastated villages.

EPA lacks guts to follow through with own dolphin impact meetings

It sounded great – the “Expert Meeting on the Impacts of Relevant West Coast Development Projects on the Humpback Dolphins and Integrated Impact Reduction Measures”. What more all-encompassing assessment could those concerned about the effects of unrelenting coastal industrial development on Taiwan’s critically endangered humpback dolphin population have asked for? Well, perhaps one that in some way reflected the intention suggested by this superb title. Now two such meetings have been held, and green groups are at a loss for positive words to describe the results.

Shortly before the first “expert meeting” on 1 June the host – Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) - sent participants copies of a report that was to be discussed. Given the several dozen major development projects adjacent to or upstream of the dolphins’ habitat, it seemed somewhat inappropriate that the sole subject of the report was Taiwan Power Company’s (Taipower) Changgong Coal-Fired Power Plant, proposed for construction on the Changhua County coast. Although the expert meeting had indeed originally been proposed during an assessment meeting for the Taipower project, the impacts of one single power plant could hardly represent the diverse forms of pollution, land and water use, freshwater exploitation and underwater noise associated with all the other projects up and down the west coast. And with its all-inclusive title the EPA clearly meant to discuss the enormous collective load of all the projects on the dolphins…didn’t it?

So staff members of Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association did what they considered to be the EPA’s homework and put together a list of thirty-one projects that would likely cause major environmental changes relevant to the dolphins. This included several river damming and diversion projects, coal-fired and offshore wind power plants, petrochemical and hi-tech science parks, a steel plant and a harbour expansion project.

On 1 June, Wild distributed the list to the EPA and its expert committee. Participants from Changhua Coast Conservation Action, Changhua Environmental Protection Union, Matsu’s Fish Conservation Union, Taiwan Academy of Ecology, EAST and Green Party Taiwan all echoed Wild’s concerns that any meeting purporting to address the combined impact of all west coast projects should live up to its name.

Participating groups also challenged the quality of the Changgong power plant report, prepared by Dr. Lien-Siang Chou of National Taiwan University (NTU), as not meeting even basic scientific standards, failing to cite major relevant published reports, omitting important data, making inaccurate statements and demonstrating a bias. (Dr. Chou was hired by Taipower to carry out their study of the potential impacts of the power plant on the dolphins).

The committee concluded that Taipower would have to gather more information on the dolphins and suggest ways in which the company proposed to reduce the impact of the power plant on the population, and also that no decisions could be made based on the information that had been presented.

However, no solution was offered regarding the glaring problem of the other thirty projects.

Not one of the other projects featured in the second expert meeting on 31 July, either. Instead, a revised report by Dr. Chou focused on what the Changgong coal-fired power plant would NOT do to the dolphins – e.g. it would, apparently, not involve noisy pile-driving or obstruct their north-south movement along the coast - but failed to even mention the plant’s air pollution as a potential threat to the air-breathing mammals.

Regarding other sources of noise pollution during construction, Dr. Chou recommended adopting the 180 decibel (dB) threshold, used by the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), as the noise level at which Taipower should temporarily stop construction and start thinking up noise reduction measures.

In fact, 180 dB is the noise level at which the NMFS claims permanent physiological damage can occur in cetaceans (although scientists argue that lower noise levels can also lead to such damage). It is also widely acknowledged – also by NMFS – that noise levels far lower than this can have other important effects such as temporary hearing loss and behavioural impacts, which can be equally life-threatening to animals so dependent on acoustic signals for survival. Therefore, the adoption of a 180 dB threshold would show almost no precaution, allowing all possible levels of impact to occur - even permanent hearing loss - before noise reduction measures would be triggered.

In response to the concerns over the continued treatment of Taipower’s power plant as a proxy for all west coast cases, the chair of the meeting, Dr. Fan Kuang-Lung, a professor of oceanography at NTU, brushed these aside, and finally dismissed everyone but the expert committee for a closed door session.

The committee’s conclusions were that 1) west coast developers should act in accordance with Taiwan’s Wildlife Conservation Act (which says that humpback dolphins are a Level One protected species and, hence, affords them the highest level of protection from human activities); 2) the dolphins could be impacted by habitat destruction, pollution (including noise pollution), reduced sources of food and fisheries interactions, but that the extent of these impacts was not yet known; and 3) careful assessment of the potential for west coast development projects to cause these impacts is recommended.

The disappointment (apart from the fact that freshwater exploitation was omitted from this version of the now two-year-old list of major threats to the population) is that these conclusions only confirm what has been said repeatedly since at least as far back as the second international workshop on Taiwan’s humpback dolphins in Changhua City in 2007, although this is largely a symptom of the lack of detailed, accurate information provided to committee members - what more could they have said? Also, although this was by no means unexpected, the EPA unfortunately seems no closer than before to addressing the combined, synergistic impacts of the myriad sources of anthropogenic disturbance along the west coast.

One wonders whether the title of the meeting was an attempt by the EPA to establish a set of unspecific or irrelevant statements that could be applied arbitrarily to all projects in order to shuttle them through the EIA process, or the brainchild of a sensible, well-meaning junior official, who might then have been reprimanded for thinking out of the box. Either way, the EPA appears bent on denying the only logical interpretation of the title of its own meeting.

The hint of a silver lining glimmers, albeit very modestly, around the fact that the dolphins’ legal status has now been acknowledged by an expert committee appointed by the EPA. However, whether and how this will be reflected in action over the following months of project impact assessments will depend very much, as always, on the work of representatives from green groups attending and monitoring the EPA’s meetings.