Protecting the natural environment
Like other islands in the South China Sea, Taiping Island is a coral reef. The island is not large, but as it has drinkable fresh water and occupies a strategic position, ROC forces have always maintained a presence there.
After Cheng Yi-chun arrived, he first made a survey of all the island's beaches, and found many traces of turtles coming ashore to lay eggs. There were both old and new tracks, showing that the turtles had landed to lay their eggs over a long period of time. Their landing points were mainly concentrated along the beaches in the southeast of the island.
After measuring the older tracks, Cheng gave out a questionnaire to 16 officers and men who had already been stationed on the island for almost a year. From their replies he discovered that green turtles come ashore to lay eggs on Taiping Island throughout the year. with the largest numbers appearing in July, August and September. The same turtle may come ashore and lay eggs several times in the same area. On average, each of the men had seen turtles more than eight times during each of the preceding three months. Cheng believes this may be related to the fact that the local natural environment has not suffered large-scale degradation.
As for the total number of times the 16 servicemen surveyed had seen green turtles in their almost a year of service on the island, the figures ranged from five to 60, but the majority reported seeing them around 30 times.
The reason why green turtles appear most frequently on the island's southeast coast is partly that the beaches there are comparatively well preserved and have very few buildings, and also that this area, being outside the zone where the forces stationed on the island are usually active, has retained relatively large tracts of virgin tropical forest.
The defenses built by the military sometimes hinder the turtles coming ashore to lay eggs, or even endanger their lives. Wire fences run all the way round the island above the high-water line, and trenches have been dug there too. According to Cheng Yi-chun's interviews with garrison members, when turtles crawl further from the shore and approach these defenses they are sometimes caught under the wire so that they can move neither forward nor back, or they may fall into the trenches. Because the turtles helped the marines in the past, one of the unwritten rules of Taiping Island is never to kill turtles. The garrison's daily patrols now keep a special watch for turtles caught in the defenses. If they see any turtles in trouble, they have to help them return to the sea, and report and record the incident.
Exploitation of the island's natural resources has also indirectly affected the green turtle's survival. Taiping Island has a layer of guano suitable for use as industrial phosphate. During World WarII, when the island was occupied by the Japanese, a Japanese company mined guano there. The Japanese also changed the name of the Spratly Islands (called the Nansha--"South Sand"--Islands in Chinese) to the "Shinnan Islands" ("New Southern Islands"). A stele inscribed with this name still stands on the Taiping Island, but the Japanese text below the name has been plastered over.
After the ROC government relocated to Taiwan, the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen (VACRS) also mined guano on Taiping Island, but the mining operations affected the quality of the island's drinking water. Taiping Island is surrounded by the sea, and one might think that its only source of fresh water would be rainwater, such as the afternoon showers in summer and the rain brought by typhoons. But in fact the island's underground water is of a quality good enough for drinking, for the layer of guano acts as a natural filtration system which removes the salt from seawater. Before the VACRS stopped mining guano, the water pumped up from underground was becoming severely saline, and had almost become unfit for drinking. It was only after guano extraction stopped that the water quality gradually stabilized again. The end of mining activities also meant that apart from the military, there was no more disturbance on the island, and the green turtles began to appear there more often.
This abandoned pier has become a perch for seabirds.