In the beginning of March each year, the variously colored abalone babies in New Taipei City’s Marine Resources Restoration Park will move to a new home. These abalone babies were born at the end of 2021 and, after spending four months living on the corrugated sheet, they are now 1-cm long. To facilitate their growth, nursery staffs will move them to the bottom of incubation pond to cater to their benthic and light-avoiding habitual behavior. After their shell reaches around 3 cm, nursery staffs will release them to waters of New Taipei City to enhance living marine resources of New Taipei City.
After being hatched out in early November 2021, these abalone babies of Marine Resources Restoration Park have been living on the corrugated sheet and eating microalgae thereon for four months. Nevertheless, as macroalgae also grow on the corrugated sheet, nursery staffs have to remove them from the sheet, so that corrugated sheets will not float up and microalgae will have enough space to grow as abalone babies’ food source. Now, these abalone babies’ shell already reached around 1 cm and their food intake also continues to increase as they grow up. This means that the microalgae on the corrugated sheet can no longer meet their growth needs. This is the reason that nursery staffs used five-leg bricks to build reef-like caves at the bottom of incubation pond and then moved these abalone babies to their new home. This moving process is commonly known as “brushing the sheet＂.
Nursery staff Chen Wu Su-chen expresses that, to rapidly and precisely brush abalone babies on the corrugated sheet into the bottom of the incubation bond, they will set up a 330 cm long and 30 cm wide plank on the incubation pond; use the inner tube skin of tire and large Styrofoam picked up by the sea to hand make seat cushions; use a rope to tie the seat cushion on their buttocks in order to sit on the long plank; and then use a soft brush to gently brush abalone babies on the corrugated sheet into their new home at the bottom of the pond. The grown abalones love to eat Gracilaria, known as a genus of algae. The nursery staffs will firstly cut Gracilaria into broken algae and then evenly spread them on the pond, so that the abalone babies can eat them. Besides, it is a must to wash the incubation pond and change the water on a regular basis, so that the abalone babies will have sufficient food and grow up in a clean environment.
New Taipei City Fisheries and Fishing Port Affairs Management Office expresses that, to ensure the sustainable use of New Taipei City’s marine resources, New Taipei City Government cultivates variously colored abalone in Marine Resources Restoration Park every year from November to May of the following year. When these abalone babies’ shell reaches around 3 cm, students of New Taipei City will be invited to release these abalones to the waters of New Taipei City. It is the City Government’s aspiration that this activity will not only increase New Taipei City’s marine resources, but also promote marine conservation and resource sustainability concepts among students.
