New changes to the 2019 fishing moratorium policy, with rewards during the moratorium period to protect the recovery of marine resources
To encourage fishermen to observe the fishing moratorium in port during a certain period, the Fisheries Agency originally established the "Voluntary Fishing Moratorium Implementation Guidelines," and recently, in accordance with Article 59-1, Paragraph 2 of the Fisheries Act, announced the "Voluntary Fishing Moratorium Reward Regulations," in which the reward amount for each sampan and fishing raft was raised from the original 9,600 yuan to 20,000 yuan.
The moratorium provisions in the regulations state that "fishing vessels holding a specific fishery license, and not being live fish carrier vessels, vessels exclusively operating recreational fishing or fishery-right fisheries" may apply, provided that "during the moratorium reward period, the fishing vessel has cumulatively gone to sea for operations for 90 days or more, and has observed the moratorium in a domestic port for 120 days or more."
It was previously reported that some fishermen left port and immediately returned in order to collect the moratorium reward, so the regulations also explicitly stipulate that the time at sea for operations must reach 4 hours in order to count as 1 day of sea operations, in the hope that genuine fishermen will participate in the moratorium system, which is what the Fisheries Agency expects.
The original guidelines stipulated a reward of 9,600 yuan for sampans, fishing rafts, etc., while the reward regulations changed it to 20,000 yuan; calculating for a 12-ton fishing vessel, the original reward was 21,600 yuan per vessel, and under the new regulations it becomes 38,000 yuan. In addition, the new regulations also explicitly set the maximum reward at 200,000 yuan.
According to Fisheries Agency statistics, there are about 22,000 fishing vessels across Taiwan, China, and last year about nearly 10,000 participated in the moratorium, with expenditures of about 200 million yuan. As for whether this year's expenditures have been assessed, the Fisheries Agency said that because this year's rewards are higher and the review is relatively stricter, the specific amount still depends on the actual number of vessels applying.
Fishermen are worried about crowding out other fishery-related budgets. Shen Dakun, deputy director of the Fisheries Agency's Fisheries Administration Division, said that after the Council of Agriculture sent the budget to the Legislative Yuan for review last year, the Fisheries Act was only then amended and included an accompanying resolution requiring the formulation of reward regulations, so it will seek budget from the Executive Yuan and will not crowd out other fishery budgets.
Zhang Huijun, executive director of the Kuroshio Culture and Education Foundation, said that the moratorium is intended to achieve marine resource recovery, and the moratorium period should set different moratorium periods for different fish species, taking into account the nursery periods of different species, etc. If the current voluntary moratorium approach is still adopted, whether it can take into account the recovery of marine resources "may still be treating the symptoms but not the root cause," and she suggested that the Fisheries Agency's policy should be closer to the actual situation.
