nty of Pingtung recently witnessed a failed attempt by service workers to angle platax orbicularis raised by the museum, angering an environmentalist, local Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily reported yesterday. Chang Tze-chian, vice chairman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, lashed out at the museum for poor personnel management and lack of respect for marine biology. “It’s really quite ridiculous, given the fact that the mission of the museum is to educate visitors about marine biology,” Chang said.
Some two months ago, employees of the museum found a fishhook with a 20-cm fishing line in the mouth of one of 27 platax orbicularis raised in the museum’s ocean-water pool when making routine inspections of the museum.
The employees dived into the pool and removed the fishhook from the mouth of the platax orbicularis, and then let the fish back into the pool.
Since visitors to the museum can only watch the fish from outside a thick glass, they can hardly use a fishing line and hook to angle in the pool. As a result, some employees suspected that the incident was caused by a colleague and tipped off the Apple Daily about the scandal.
Ironically, the scandal occurred at a museum that uses the platax orbicularis or orbicular batfish as its emblem.
Platax orbicularis is a popular aquarium fish endemic to tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Its body is almost disc-shaped and very thin; the tail, about 20 percent of the body length, is fan-shaped and wider than it is long. Males can grow to up to 50 cm in length, though aquarium specimens are generally much shorter.
In the wild, the orbicular batfish is found in brackish or marine waters, usually around reefs, at depths ranging from 5 to 30 meters.
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