Fishers’ Awareness and Participation of the Environmental Protection Fleet Program in Tainan City

Abstract

Marine litter is a ubiquitous or omnipresent incessant and swelling threat to the oceans and numerous initiatives aim to address such predicament Rooting in the fact that garbage causes environmental pollution aligning with other countries in solving marine debris becomes inevitable to Taiwan authority Environmental Protection Fleet (EPF) Program is a voluntary clean-up scheme which ocean litter is collected as part of routine fishing operations Two corresponding programs Waste Recycling Award and Marine Litter Disposal Area are both discussed in this research Methodology includes conducting interviews with 3 organizers 2 co-organizers of EPF program and 7 fishers in Tainan and surveys between fishers (n=228) for their perceptions of EPF program which indicated the overall satisfaction toward EPF program was very positive (4 11/5) Moreover EPF program fishers reported less environmentally harmful waste management behaviors on the sea than non- EPF fishers did This research found that most fishers are environmentally conscious and willing to help collecting garbage during their operation and what they concerned is the convenience for disposing collected garbage instead of an award or a honorable prize Although Waste Recycling Award and Marine Litter Disposal Area programs were evaluated positively (3 99 and 4 06 /5) however garbage should be separated into generals or recyclables and it took too much time for fishers participating Waste Recycling Award program and Marine Litter Disposal Area was far away from the pier resulting in low participation in both programmes With fishers' precious opinions and feedbacks to the programs we made suggestions for future changes

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chung-Ling Chen (Supervisor)