Chung Ling Chen

Regulation and Management of Marine Litter

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the regulation and management instruments developed at international, regional and national levels to address marine litter problems, put forward the potential gaps in the existing management body and suggest solutions. While not covering the gamut of all relevant instruments, a number of existing instruments, including specific management measures contained therein, were profiled as illustration. The management measures illustrated are either on a mandatory or voluntary basis and provide a general, snapshot picture of the management framework of marine litter. They can be broadly divided into four categories: preventive, mitigating, removing and behavior-changing. The preventive and behavior-changing measures are particularly important in addressing marine litter at its root. The former schemes include source reduction, waste reuse and recycling, containing debris at points of entry into receiving waters and land-based management initiatives (e.g. restriction of the use of plastic bags, establishment of extended producer responsibility). The latter schemes aid people’s engagement in the other three types of measures, including education campaigns and activities raising awareness (e.g. Fishing for Litter). The potential gaps include limits of existing instruments in addressing plastic marine litter, deficiencies in the legislation and a lack of enforcement of regulations, poor cooperation among countries on marine litter issues and insufficient data on marine litter. To fill these gaps, recommendations are proposed, including establishment of a new international instrument targeted to the plastic marine litter problem, amending existing instruments to narrow exceptions and clarify enforcement standards, establishing national marine litter programe, enhancing participation and cooperation of states with regard to international/regional initiative, and devising measures to prevent marine litter from fishing vessels.

Marine environmental awareness among university students in Taiwan: a potential signal for sustainability of the oceans

University students are regarded as future decision-makers in society and have a high likelihood of becoming opinion-shapers in terms of the environment. Their awareness of the marine environment will therefore have a significant effect upon sustainable marine development. This study examines Taiwanese university students’ marine environmental awareness, focusing on environmental attitudes, understanding of marine and coastal issues, and environmental behavior. A total of 825 valid samples in a questionnaire survey are used for the analysis. Overall, respondents possess a highly positive attitude towards the marine environment and a moderate self-reported level of marine knowledge, but are not actively engaged in environmental protection endeavors, particularly ones involving spending personal income and taking legal or political action. Experience in marine-related activities and marine knowledge are important in fostering marine environmental awareness, particularly in regard to environmental behavior. This study addresses the gap between widespread environmental concerns and low engagement in environmental actions by proposing a multimodal approach: improving marine knowledge and experience in marine-related activities, creating safe recreational spaces at seasides, and reinforcing legal education. This study concludes by highlighting the importance of marine environmental awareness in the development of ocean citizenship as well as the sustainability of the marine environment.

Information theoretic perspective on coastal water-quality monitoring and management near an offshore industrial park

A semi-continuous water-quality monitoring system was installed in Yunlin Offshore Industrial Park (YOIP), the largest industrial park in Taiwan, in 2007 to provide real-time water-quality information such as pH, water depth, dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, conductivity, and chlorophyll. To interpret the large quantities of high-frequency data generated by this system, information theory was applied for data analysis and extraction of useful information for further coastal water-quality management. Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics that involves the quantification of information. Shannon entropy is a key measure of information that was calculated in this study to reveal the inherent uncertainty of water-quality information. The applicability of Shannon entropy for signaling possible coastal pollution events in the YOIP was explored and results showed that it provides new insight into the inherent uncertainty or randomness of the original data. Specially, when Shannon entropy was high, multiple instable readings were observed for turbidity and salinity. This indicates that Shannon entropy may be a useful new tool for exploratory data analysis. It can be used as a supplementary indicator along with the original environmental data to signify some episodes of water-quality degradation.

Educational benefits of ecolabelling whale watching tour experience.

The whale watching ecolabel is a certification giving assurance that tour operations are conducted in such a way as to minimize environmental impact, foster visitors’ appreciation of marine conservation, and enhance visitor enjoyment. Exploring educational benefits of whale watching ecolabelling tour experience is therefore important to policy makers. This paper investigates the differences in environmental knowledge, awareness, attitudes and behavioral intentions between tourists after ecolabelling and nonecolabelling travel experience. Results reveal that ecolabelling tour experience had a significant impact on tourist’s site-based knowledge, marine conservation awareness, and environmental behavioral intentions. However, the results do not show significant differences in environmental attitudes and visitor enjoyment. This study highlights the need for implementing ecolabelling, increasing public awareness of the ecolabelled tours and providing economic incentives for tour operators to engage in ecolabelling.