The Silent Tragedy Playing Out Daily in Taiwan's Fishing Harbors: Sharks, Manta Rays, and Fishermen

The Giant Manta Ray That Made Headlines

On May 22, 2018, a photo went viral online showing a massive manta ray with a 5-meter wingspan accidentally caught by fishermen at Suogang Harbor in Penghu. As the story spread across social media, it reportedly pressured the Penghu County Magistrate and Council Speaker to personally issue instructions late into the night. In the end, after intervention by both political figures and social media, this rare manta ray — watched by thousands on Facebook Live — was taken out to open water and "released back into the wild."

Behind what appeared to be a victory for conservation and social justice, however, lies a far deeper issue. After a night of online outrage fueled by social media and the press, how much do people actually remember? The next time a manta ray is hauled ashore, the same drama will play out all over again — and the dream of seeing a manta ray gliding through the water in Taiwan will remain as distant as ever. It's worth stepping back from the noise and thinking carefully about what we can actually do.

For the purposes of a reporting trip, I had the opportunity on May 19, 2018, to travel to Penghu to interview Brother Ye Shenghong of Dao'ao 77. Naturally, I took the chance to ask him — a man who grew up in a fishing family — to take me to Magong Fishing Harbor, Penghu's largest, for a look at the local fish market culture. In those brief ninety minutes, I felt as though I had found an answer, only to find myself even deeper in fog, drawn into a more profound kind of reflection.

Penghu — A Market Overflowing with Catch

Penghu is best known for its Spanish mackerel, which commands high prices around the Lunar New Year period every year. Influenced by a branch of the Kuroshio Current, Penghu's winters are dominated by migratory species including Spanish mackerel, frigate tuna, and amberjack, while summer catches are primarily bottom-trawled. Almost all the fish caught across Penghu county arrives at Magong Fishing Harbor before 4 a.m., ready to be sold. Back when Brother Ye was still fishing himself, boats would head out around 7 p.m. and work through the night before docking at Magong in the early hours.

At Penghu's market you'll find catch from every kind of fishing method — longline, purse seine, drift gill nets (large-mesh and legally permitted), trawl nets, and more. All the catch is auctioned on the spot. While some supplies the local Penghu market, the bulk of Penghu's catch is actually shipped to the Taiwan mainland. Ice-making equipment, professional boxing teams, and a full division of labor are all in place to handle the volume.

Shark Bycatch

After getting a basic feel for how the fish market operates, we found, tucked into one corner, a sight that would break any diver's heart: a pile of sharks. No exaggeration — a genuine heap of sharks, dumped in the most overlooked corner of the market. Unlike other catch, they weren't packed in ice or tagged with lot numbers awaiting auction. They just lay there quietly, as if some wordless fate was already waiting for them.

The pile contained a variety of species. Besides the common Blacktip Reef Sharks, there was also a Hammerhead Shark — that iconic species every diver dreams of encountering — buried under the heap. I asked a nearby fishery boss why all these sharks were just sitting there with nobody buying them. The sun-darkened, plainspoken man replied: "Because nobody wants them." It turned out that shark fetches only around NT$50–80 per kilogram. Penghu's signature Spanish mackerel, when prices are good, can go for NT$1,600 per kilogram; even when I visited outside peak season, it was still around NT$400–500 per kilogram. In market terms, shark is simply a very low-value catch.

So where do these sharks end up? The fishery boss pointed to a middle-aged man in flip-flops: "That guy is the shark trader here. He'll load them up by the truckload in a bit and take them off to be made into fish paste." And that, it turns out, is the fate awaiting these sharks — shipped in bulk to a Penghu producer that makes oden fish cakes, ground into fish paste and added to all manner of processed foods.

Beside the pile of sharks I also spotted another large form on the ground — a roughly 2-meter Indo-Pacific blue marlin, colloquially known as the "broken umbrella fish." It too lay quietly on the floor, apparently destined to join the sharks in becoming someone's fish cake. The reason was the same: poor texture, low market value.

Brother Ye said: "What divers love to see is exactly what fishermen don't want."

Brother Ye, who has been getting into recreational dive tourism in recent years, cut right to the heart of the growing tension between divers and fishermen. We've often wondered why a single shark or manta ray can generate enormous economic value abroad through dive tourism, while in Taiwan we can only encounter them at the fishing harbor — and why emotionally charged words like "fishermen = ignorant villagers" have even started appearing online. Brother Ye spoke with quiet gravity: We're all in the habit of taking what we consider self-evident and applying it to people from a completely different walk of life — forcing that group to accept our perspective. That is where the conflict begins.

Think about it: a fisherman who has spent his entire life fishing, knows only fishing, braves wind and waves to head out to sea, operates according to the government's fishing regulations, and unfortunately ends up catching low-value sharks. Since he hasn't broken any rules, of course he brings them back to port to help cover fuel costs. Everything is legal, everything is reasonable. The dive tourism revenue that divers keep championing means nothing to him — he only knows that if he doesn't work hard to go out and fish, there is no income.

Beyond observing that fishermen simply live day after day according to their experience and way of life, Brother Ye also raised several issues that deserve far greater attention — not just in Taiwan, but in fisheries management worldwide.

Is There a Solution to the Bycatch Problem?

The most controversial fishing method when it comes to bycatch today is the purse seine. A net stretching several kilometers cannot target specific species, and modern purse-seine fleets even deploy helicopters to locate and concentrate fish schools — an extraordinarily efficient operation that sweeps up all kinds of marine life in a single haul, with a large proportion being non-target species.

The canned tuna we all love to eat is mostly caught by longline, but beyond tuna, the vast majority of hooks baited on a longline will attract sharks, sailfish, and even sea turtles as unintended bycatch. Bottom trawl nets, which primarily target shrimp, are even more indiscriminate: beyond the high-value target species, smaller fish with no commercial value are routinely swept up as "trash fish" and sent to factories to be processed into feed for aquaculture.

Many people ask: can't the incidentally caught animals just be released? Unfortunately, by the time catch from these three high-bycatch methods is brought aboard, the animals are almost always already dead. Which brings us back to the fisherman's point of view: if they're dead by the time they reach the deck, why not bring them back to port and sell them to offset fuel costs?

Species-Specific Catch Regulations and Protected Species Designations

Oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, harboring an extraordinary diversity of species beneath the waves. Conducting the research necessary to establish catch regulations for any single species is enormously difficult. Taiwan has few marine research institutions, and the resources required far exceed those needed for terrestrial biodiversity surveys. Given that all legislation must be grounded in rigorous survey data, the fact that Taiwan's marine species catch regulations lag far behind other countries is simply undeniable. At the time of writing, Taiwan has no specific catch regulations governing sharks, manta rays, or even mola mola/sunfish — all species divers consider icons — let alone any framework referencing international standards for protected species designation.

But even if species-specific catch regulations were enacted, whether they could actually be enforced is one question. And in the absence of a proper solution to the bycatch problem, would sharks and manta rays really stop being caught? Under laws prohibiting the landing of certain species, fishermen would simply be obligated to throw the animals back — because as long as they don't bring them into port, divers won't see it, the media won't see it, and there will be no controversy.

So What Can We Do?

Is this silent daily tragedy simply destined to play out in Taiwan's fishing harbors forever? Brother Ye believes the issue isn't about fishing licenses (meaning government-issued commercial fishing permits), but about zoning. If the government is willing to designate more no-take zones and back them up with strict enforcement, marine ecosystems will have a chance to recover. As he put it: "No fishing inside protected zones; outside those zones, as long as you're not catching protected species, it's legal fishing — and fishermen have every right to fish." He also urged divers to stop measuring fishermen by our own value system. The reason we today see sharks and manta rays as worth watching is because we dive and can actually observe them. Before scuba diving existed as a sport, everyone — divers included — would likely have seen these animals exactly as fishermen do: as a food resource. It's all relative.

If you genuinely care about what this means for our ocean, consider spending some time following these issues over the long term — supporting NGOs, signing petitions and advocacy campaigns, urging the government to enact relevant regulations, or even simply sharing these ideas with the people around you. Any of that is more constructive than hurling abuse online and deepening the divide between two communities.

海編"布魯陳"

我是布魯陳，平常喜歡帶著大相機下海找生物，如果你有海洋議題歡迎找我聊聊，約我吃飯更歡迎！