Xiji Islet has been thrust into the limelight in recent months. Having been abandoned by its previous occupants in 1978, Xiji is a small, uninhabited island in a remote part of the archipelago chain of Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait. The islet drew little attention even from Penghu residents until earlier this year, when it rose from obscurity thanks to photographs that went viral on the Internet of a stunning geological formation that has become known as the Blue Cave. In the photos, sunlight streams in through a large circular opening in the rocky ceiling of the sea cave, causing the columnar basalt walls to glow bright blue. The fluorescent hue, which occurs only when the sun is high overhead around midday on clear days, is reflected in the waters surging into the cave, giving the entire scene an otherworldly quality. While the Blue Cave has increased the number of visitors to Xiji, the official June 8 announcement by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) regarding the establishment of Taiwan’s ninth and newest national park—comprising Xiji and three other islets—has further expanded its name recognition.
“The birth of a national park in Penghu has boosted people’s curiosity about the region. Now they want to see these islands, which most people have never visited,” says Tu Lien-yue (涂連越), who takes tourists on trips to the four islands and their surrounding waters. To pique the already growing interest in the region, the 20-something tour guide says he plans to add snorkeling to the itinerary he offers tourists so that they can also discover the beautiful underwater ecology in the area.
The South Penghu Marine National Park is scheduled to start operations this month when staff begin manning its main office, which has been converted from a decommissioned junior high school on Dongji Islet. The national park is located in the southern part of the Penghu archipelago. The four major islets—Dongji, Dongyuping, Xiji and Xiyuping—and numerous smaller ones comprise a total land mass of 370 hectares. The park stretches across an east-to-west rectangular section of the Taiwan Strait measuring 35,843 hectares in size. Only about 50 people live on the grounds of the national park today. Administratively, this group of islands is part of the municipality of Wang’an Township, Penghu County.
“The environment faces little threat of pollution because the region is remote and relatively undisturbed by human activity,” says Yu Shyi-liang (于錫亮), a professor in the Department of Tourism and Leisure at National Penghu University of Science and Technology (NPU). A trip from Taipei City in northern Taiwan to Dongji, the largest island in the park, first involves a 50-minute flight from Taipei to Magong City on the archipelago’s main island, which is also named Penghu. This is before traveling for up to one and a half hours by boat on sometimes rough seas to reach Dongji.
The undersea world between Xiyuping Islet and Dongyuping Islet (Photo courtesy of Marine National Park Headquarters)
The MOI’s Marine National Park Headquarters (MNPH), which is headquartered in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan, has released seven publications introducing the four main islands and the surrounding sea area to the public. Diving at the Southern Four Islands, which was published in December 2013, is the result of a project commissioned by the MNPH to explore the undersea world of the park. The guidebook extols the virtues of the area as a haven for scuba divers and snorkelers. Using information provided by veteran fishermen, sea charts from the Republic of China (ROC) Navy and academic reports on the area’s marine ecology, professional divers involved in the project spent eight months surveying more than 30 diving sites rich in colorful, diverse marine life. With safety and accessibility factored in, the material they provided for the book indicates the 15 best places to dive in the park. “The coral reefs are quite spectacular,” Yu says. “What I saw was a great expanse of beautiful coral reefs in clear water,” he adds, recalling the first time he went snorkeling in the region in 2007.
A precondition for establishing a national park is the kind of relatively unspoiled natural environment that is found on and around these small islands in southern Penghu, says MNPH director Yang Mo-lin (楊模麟). In addition to the newly established South Penghu Marine National Park, the MNPH also oversees the similarly pristine Dongsha Atoll National Park, which was established in the northern area of the South China Sea in 2007. After the birth of the Dongsha park, the MOI tasked the MNPH with assessing the plausibility of setting up more marine parks in order to better align the country with the growing global trend of establishing marine reserves.
Cold Weather Warning
In 2008, prolonged cold weather, which was emblematic of the extreme variations in temperature becoming more common in the region likely as a result of climate change, prompted the MNPH to begin preparations to establish the national park in the archipelago.
Xiyuping and other remote islets in the Penghu marine national park have great potential to become bases for nature lovers who wish to explore the area. (Photo courtesy of Marine National Park Headquarters)
In particular, the abnormal weather alerted the MNPH of the need to take action to conserve the area’s marine ecology. Marine life in the southern section of the archipelago just below the Tropic of Cancer often fares better than life in other parts of the Penghu region. The huge Kuroshio Current in the western Pacific Ocean carries warm water north toward Japan from the waters southeast of Taiwan. One branch of the Kuroshio flows into the Taiwan Strait. A colder south-flowing current running along the coast of mainland China and through Penghu is terminated by the Kuroshio branch in the Tropic of Cancer. The colder waters are detrimental to sea life in the archipelago, but the warmer Kuroshio waters help it thrive.
“The southern region is developing a sort of huge germplasm bank. Aquatic species can prosper there with the help of the national park regulations against fishing, which can replenish fish stocks hurt by extreme weather in other parts of the archipelago,” says Yang, adding the coral reefs that flourish in the region also support marine life. “Coral reefs are just like rainforests on land. Both are feeding grounds and habitats for a variety of creatures.”
The geologic wonders on the islands are just as worthy of protection as the ecology of the watery depths. Penghu is home to two of Taiwan’s 22 nature reserves, all of which were founded in accordance with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act. The Penghu Columnar Basalt Nature Reserve was established in 1992 in the northern part of the archipelago. In 2008, the Penghu Columnar Basalt Nature Reserve Nanhai was set up covering areas of land on Dongji and Xiji islets as well as on two smaller islets, Toujin and Tiezhen islets, which are near Xiyuping Islet. As the names of the two reserves indicate, basalt formations, notably basalt columns, feature prominently in the landscapes of the islets. The special scenic land areas in the new national park that are demarcated for protected status are based on the Penghu Columnar Basalt Nature Reserve Nanhai.
The basalt landscapes of these islets become especially fascinating when migratory birds descend on them, with various species of tern, and in particular crested tern, arriving in greater numbers than any other bird species. According to information drawn from a one-year survey commissioned by the MNPH that formed the basis of a bird-watching book published in 2011, 66 migratory bird species visit the national park, 19 of which are listed as endangered, threatened or vulnerable.
The establishment of the South Penghu Marine National Park will help replenish the region’s fish stocks and protect its stunning coral reefs. (Photo courtesy of Marine National Park Headquarters)
“The history of the area that contains the South Penghu Marine National Park sets itself apart from that of the Dongsha Atoll National Park,” Yang says. In the mid-17th century, the official notes, people began to immigrate from Fujian province in mainland China to Taiwan via the Penghu archipelago. Dongji Islet was the final stop before they set out on the last leg of their journey across the sea to Taiwan proper. In 2009, the government established the Taijiang National Park in Tainan, whose significance in part is due to the history of immigrants from Fujian landing in the Taijiang area. Dongji Islet is situated at the northwestern corner of the rectangular area of the park. The sea route from Fujian through Dongji to Taijiang recalls the pioneering spirit that led many people to cross the sometimes treacherous waters of the Taiwan Strait.
On the once-thriving islets in the national park in Penghu now stand empty Western-style houses, homes made of stones and a couple of Chinese-style temples, and the MNPH has plans to restore some that have fallen into disrepair. There are also cai zhai—“vegetable houses,” which are actually walls built from stones to shield vegetables from the strong, salty winds that blow across the region—structures unique to the Penghu archipelago. “Besides the natural landscapes, the otherworldly atmosphere created by the deserted homes on the remote, once-thriving islets is quite special, too,” says Tu, who set foot on the islets in the national park for the first time only earlier this year.
Some controversy and concerns have been stirred up as a result of the government’s designs to protect the environment of the new park, however. “I welcome the project because it can help greatly improve the infrastructure on the islets in the park, but people who often enter the region to catch fish for a living have doubts about the park. They’re afraid they won’t be able to fish as freely as before in the region now that the park has been established,” says Xu Shun-long (許順龍), chief of Dongji Village on Dongji Islet.
Deserted homes on Dongyuping Islet (Photo courtesy of Marine National Park Headquarters)
In order to address these concerns, the MNPH has been communicating with local residents, including those living near the park, since 2010. Much of the resistance to the park has come from the two most populous islands of Wang’an Township—Wang’an Island and Jiangjun’ao Islet—which are not included in the national park, but whose residents are mostly fishermen who see the park waters as their traditional fishing grounds. MNPH personnel have met face-to-face with local residents to explain that the park would have limited if any impact on their fishing. In fact, except for the protected 68-hectare ecological zone surrounding Tiezhen Islet in the northwest of the national park, people can fish without a permit. There are some limitations on the fishing, though. Bottom gillnetting, where weights are attached to a gillnet to hold it on the ocean floor, is restricted or prohibited in a rectangular zone that accounts for 46 percent of the park’s total area. In specific places near the four islets of Dongji, Dongyuping, Xiji and Xiyuping that make up approximately 15 percent of the park’s total area, this practice is prohibited all year round. It is not allowed during the fall and winter months in all other waters of this special park zone.
“Such protective measures will benefit local fishing as well in the long term because they ensure sustainability,” says Yang. He also claims that the June announcement of the park’s establishment indicates that government efforts to communicate with local residents have dispelled concerns about the park. Penghu residents aside, the MNPH also talked to individuals who used to live in what is now the national park as well as their offspring, many of whom now live in the cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung on the island of Taiwan. Some of them still fish for a living and also had concerns about their fishing rights in the park. Others expressed concerns about how the establishment of the national park would influence the development of their hometowns, as many of them are still officially registered as residents and own property in the park.
After years of field surveys and communicating with the local populace, the establishment of the South Penghu Marine National Park is considered a milestone. Still, there is much to be done to ensure its long-term development, from effective law enforcement to sustained environmental monitoring. “We’ll continue to conduct surveys of the marine ecology and will constantly monitor the coral reefs to ensure their health,” says Yang, pointing out that certain conservation tasks have already brought substantial success. An example of this is the work done to protect coral reefs from the crown-of-thorns starfish, which is a natural predator that liquefies coral polyps with toxins from its body before draining the polyps of nutrients for nourishment. Wherever the starfish feeds, a white scar is left on the coral skeleton. The MNPH has been hunting down the starfish since 2011, primarily in the waters near Xiji Islet. More than 100 of the creatures were eliminated in 2011 and 2012, while 191 were killed in 2013 at the start of the breeding season. The starfish tend to aggregate together to achieve greater success in spawning, and this makes it easier to track them down to safeguard the coral reefs in the area. According to Yang, not a single crown-of-thorns starfish has been discovered this year.
The lighthouse on Dongji Islet. The islet was once the final stopover for people immigrating from mainland China to Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of Marine National Park Headquarters)
Impact of Tourism
Meanwhile, as the national park and its various scenic spots grow in name recognition, the MNPH needs to address mounting environmental pressure from an ever-increasing number of visitors. “On weekends, more than 100 people come to our island every day. They’re a burden on the water supply originally intended for locals. And there’s the problem of litter,” says Dongji Village chief Xu, adding that the issue became especially obvious after this past spring due to the number of visitors who traveled to the region to see the Blue Cave.
When it comes to environmental protection, the relatively remote location of the park is perhaps a blessing. Tour guide Tu says that people visit Penghu mainly in spring and summer, when the weather is comparatively mild. The relative lack of visitors at other times of the year helps relieve some of the pressure on the area from tourism. Still, the number of visitors to Taiwan’s newest national park is rising. NPU’s Yu suggests introducing a cap on the total number of visitors, preferably no more than 100 for each island in the park per day. “The development of mass tourism, which would require the construction of large hotels, can be encouraged on Penghu’s larger, more populous islands, like the main island. For small islets, which are more vulnerable to development projects and human activity, niche tourism for people with a specific interest in ecological tours should suffice,” says the scholar, who recommends that tourists not stay overnight on the islets in order to lessen the impact on the local environment.
Yu expects the South Penghu Maine National Park to become a crucial marine sanctuary and significant resource for environmental education. Yang of the MNPH sees it as a model that subsequent marine national parks can follow. “The sustainable development program will help people understand that this park is good for the region. They’ll come to appreciate our efforts to conserve regional resources without sacrificing the rights of residents and fishermen. And this should help us win support when planning future marine national parks,” says the official. He goes on to explain that the national park in Penghu is more suitable as a model than the one in the more southerly Dongsha atoll. The Dongsha Atoll National Park is mainly being developed as a resource for international scientific research. It is likely irrelevant for the vast majority of people due to its extremely remote and inconvenient location. The ROC government now plans to set up two additional marine sanctuaries: a national park centered on Green Island off Taiwan’s southeastern coast and another that will comprise three uninhabited islands—Huaping, Mianhua and Pengjia islets—off the northeastern coast. The lessons learned in the process of successfully establishing the South Penghu Marine National Park will provide a roadmap for the development of these two sanctuaries and help guide ongoing efforts to protect the environment of Taiwan.
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw