Taiwan to participate in ocean conservation drive, September 18

Coastal cleanup activities will be held nationwide on Sept. 18 in support of a global ocean conservation campaign, the nation’s major environmental groups said.

Advocacy groups, including the Taiwan Environmental Information Association, the Society of Wilderness (SOW) and the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation, said environmentally conscious people are welcome to take part in the coastal cleanup program.

Quantitative data about the trash picked up from coastal regions around Taiwan that day would be sent to the headquarters of the International Coastal Cleanup in Texas, an SOW spokesman said.

The campaign has evolved from a single cleanup on a Texas beach 25 years ago into a worldwide movement dedicated to ending the threat posed by trash in oceans around the globe, the spokesman said.

Every year in September, volunteers in more than 100 countries remove millions of kilograms of trash from beaches and waterways all over the world as part of the global volunteer effort for ocean conservation, he added.

The spokesman said that the biggest difference between the campaign’s activities and other similar programs is that the campaign provides a form to record what was found in the cleanup.

“The trash and debris collected from the world’s beaches and waterways will be documented for analysis to identify their sources,” the spokesman said.

He said the campaign is aimed at reminding the public of the gravity of ocean pollution and helping to change the behavior that allows trash and debris to reach the ocean in the first place.

Taiwan joined the cleanup campaign last year for the first time, with 370 volunteers taking part in a 2.12km coastal cleanup effort that removed 172kg of trash from beaches and coastal waters, the spokesman said.

This year, the spokesman said, all of the SOW branches in various parts of Taiwan will launch a coastal cleanup campaign on Sept. 18, along with environmental groups in many other countries, including Australia.

“Prospective volunteers are welcome to search the SOW map to find a coastal site near them and sign up online [at www. sow.org.tw] for the activity,” the spokesman said.

The Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation added it will document all the trash collected in Taiwan during the period and forward the data to the Texas headquarters.

Taipei Times

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Reef. NOAA

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