Styrofoam trash covers the coast: beyond local governance, what else can be done?

Text by Kong De-lian, reporter for News & Market. Photos and images provided by Chao Jui-kuang

Looking along the coast, beneath the layered oyster racks that rise and fall with the waves lie treasures that many oyster farmers depend on for their livelihood. Although they bring in steady income, the pollution caused during the farming process also plays out every year: snowflake-like bits of styrofoam float in the coastal waters, while huge styrofoam blocks pile up on the beaches, burying the entire coastline. To address this, the Tainan City Government enacted the "Shallow-Sea Oyster Farming Management Self-Governance Ordinance," hoping to reduce the environmental burden of farming through measures such as total-volume control, styrofoam sleeves and rewards for recycling oyster racks. Last year it successfully reached a 97% oyster rack recycling rate. But has the coastline of Tainan, a major farming hub, really improved?

Although the Tainan City Government took the lead with a self-governance ordinance and the Environmental Protection Administration also urged other counties and cities to follow suit, the Kunshen coast is still covered by large amounts of styrofoam and used oyster racks, creating an extremely distressing scene.

Two types of oyster farming; the floating-rack method requires styrofoam or floats for support

So what is the current state of oyster farming in Taiwan, China? Chao Jui-kuang, a researcher at Tainan Community University who has long studied the oyster farming industry, points out that oyster farming methods in Taiwan, China fall roughly into two types. One is the fixed method (such as the flat-hanging, vertical-hanging and stake-insertion methods), fixed on shallow tidal flats; it does not require styrofoam, nor does the oyster rack need to be replaced every year, but it requires extensive intertidal environments, such as the Qigu Lagoon and the Zhanghua and Yunlin areas. When the tide rises and falls, the oysters also leave the water and close up. The other is floating-rack farming (such as floating-rack vertical hanging and longline vertical hanging), mainly carried out on the surface of coastal waters or in estuaries, relying on styrofoam or floats for buoyancy, with oyster strings hung vertically beneath the rack and kept immersed in seawater; the main farming season is winter.

He also points out that the main oyster farming areas are concentrated in Wanggong in Zhanghua, Taixi in Yunlin, Dongshi in Chiayi and the Annan, Anping and South Districts of Tainan. Of these, Tainan accounts for more than half of the nation's floating-rack oyster farms, with an output value of over 630 million yuan. Zhou Li-chao, director of the Fishing Port Office of the Tainan City Agriculture Bureau, points out that according to statistics, Tainan currently has three main production and marketing groups in Annan, Anping and the South District, with more than 9,000 oyster farming racks, about 200 people engaged in farming, and an annual output of 5,700 metric tons, making it a major economic source for fishermen and fishing villages.

As for the specific farming details, Chao Jui-kuang says that on an oyster rack averaging 8×12 m, a string of oysters is tied about every 30 to 40 cm, and each oyster string is about 2 m long, formed from 10 to 12 groups of mother shells. At first the entire oyster rack uses 12 pieces of styrofoam as floats; as the oysters grow larger, the styrofoam is gradually increased, sometimes to more than 20 pieces, to add buoyancy.

The oyster racks used by fishermen, and the strings of oysters beneath the racks