Fishery of the Republic of China
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
II.Offshore Fishery
Offshore fishery refers to those fishing activities performed within the exclusive economic zone extending from 12 to 200 miles from the baseline. Their production has been maintained at 150-250 thousand tons per annum in recent years. The major fishing methods include trawling, ring net fishing, mackerel purse seine fishing, gill net fishing, longline fishing, light induced fishing, etc. The main fishing areas extend to the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, Bashi Channel and the waters off the east coast of Taiwan. Due to the depletion of fishery resources in the offshore waters lately, and coupling with the employment of larger vessels as well as the improvement of both fishing skill and fishing/navigation equipments, offshore tuna longliners tend to move to more distant fishing grounds.
During the period between 1991 and 1996, in order to ease the problem of labor shortage, to relieve the pressure of overfishing in the offshore seas and to prevent the use of fishing boats in illegal activities such as smuggling, through appropriation of the budgets, the Government implemented a vessel buy-back program, for reduce the number of offshore fishing vessels.
Proportion of Fishery Production in Offshore Fishery Proportion of Fishery Production in Offshore Fishery--text file
