National Taiwan Ocean University Center of Media, Public Relations and Publishing

      NTOU devoted to conserving endangered marine creatures through international collaboration. NTOU, Georgia Aquarium, the USA(GAI,) and the Fisheries Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, Taiwan(TFRI, 行政院農業委員會水產試驗所) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU.) The partnership aimed to establish a long-term collaboration to study the biology and conservation threats faced by sharks and rays in Taiwanese national waters.

      The MOU included research on population characterization, movement ecology, and biologically-significant habitats of CITES-listed sharks and rays. Supported by techniques of the Wildbook AI architecture, fixed acoustic array, and satellite tag tracking protected, the partnership intended to put marine protected area (MPA) advocacy and IUCN Red List assessments into practice.

      Vice President of Science and Education Georgia Aquarium, Alistair D. M. Dove, Ph.D. visited NTOU on January 10th. Dr. Alistair Dove believed that the project would not only support observing the movement of sharks. It would greatly favor the ecological system of marine creatures such as dolphins and turtles. In the following two days, GAI research team would also hold a tagging and tracking workshop in NTOU.

      Georgia Aquarium is an active leader in conservation within the Zoo and Aquarium community and has contributed to high-impact research. To date, GAI has fed a total of 6 whale sharks from Taiwan and attracted over 40 million visitors around the world. TFRI is Taiwan's primary fisheries research and technical consultancy services institute. NTOU is delighted to share research experience on endangered species protection and connect Taiwan to other regional hot spots for elasmobranchs like Okinawa Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, and Indonesia within the achievement of GAI.