Taiwan tourists are destroying a piece of exactly what they travel to see on an outlying mid-Pacific islet known — at least at one time — for its abundant coral reefs.

A pair of Taiwan environmental groups that marshaled 56 people to check the coral supply near Orchid Island, which is southeast of Taiwan proper, for the first time since 2004 found that the sensitive but colourful marine species covered only 18 percent of the surrounding ocean floor, down from 65 percent, said the Taiwan Environmental Information Center .

The Taipei-based information centre and its research partner the Taiwan Association for Marine Environmental Education suspect that the aftermath of a long-lasting August typhoon may have caused parts of the reef to break apart.

But they’re more concerned about a long-term influx of overeager Taiwan tourists who visit the sparsely populated island for diving or snorkeling in its azure waters.  Humans are taking too much coral or other aquatic life out of the water, hurting the ecosystem, said information centre special projects manager Kung Lu.

“Tourists have been taking too much out of the ocean,” Kung said. “Some of them just don’t know.”

Green Island, a neighbouring islet off the same subtropical coast and arguably northeast Asia’s top diving spot, is fighting an epidemic of diseased coral  as tourist traffic surges to nearly 400,000 visits per year . Orchid had gotten off easier because it’s farther from Taiwan’s main island, with fewer flights and hotels.

Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens made by tiny animals called coral polyps, are nurseries as well as shelters for fish and other sea life. It will take 50 to 100 years before Orchid Island’s coral grows back to even 40 percent of the offshore ocean floor, the information centre estimates.

Taiwan, hit by its worst typhoon in 50 years in August, has found a culprit for the disaster that killed about 770 people and begun using it to get precious attention overseas where the island is usually overlooked in favour of its giant political rival China.

Global warming is taking blame for Morakot, which was freakish as Taiwan’s only major typhoon of the year and because it lingered instead of blowing straight through. The island’s foreign ministry says that as global warming’s victim it should get to participate in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change  in time for its December talks in Copenhagen. Sixteen countries have already voiced support.

“We are a victim of this problem. It’s closely related to the public’s economic interests,” said Yang Kuo-tung, director general of the foreign ministry’s treaties and legal affairs. Morakot’s incessant rain caused agricultural losses of T$16.47 billion ($510 million).  ”It’s no laughing matter.”

But Taiwan’s bid for participation faces a new kind of storm despite recent detente with China, a powerful veto-wielding Security Council member. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949 and blocked more than a decade worth of applications to enter the United Nations on grounds that the self-ruled island lacks statehood.

Taiwan dropped an the annual bid to join the whole United Nations this year  to avoid upsetting China, but figures that knocking at the door of a small U.N. agency would cause little stir, especially with the woes of Morakot in its back pocket. Taiwan would both teach and learn as a Convention participant, Yang said.

But although China-Taiwan ties have improved via trade talks since mid-2008, officials in Beijing have resisted opening international organisations to Taiwan. Unless it whips up a powerful public relations storm that generates the kind of populist momentum at home and abroad that followed Taiwan’s colourful, music and video-enhanced U.N. bids, the island won’t make it for the Copenhagen talks and may wait up to two years before it can participate in the Convention, political analysts say.

“I don’t think ordinary people know about this organisation,” said Alex Chiang, international politics associate professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “You have to let other people know we’re qualified for participation. That’s the job for the government, telling people about it. They haven’t done much for public relations.”

((Pictures — Top right: Motorcyclists stop at an intersection in Taipei September 23, 2009. Taiwan is known as the one of the highest motorbike-density country in the world and motorbikes are responsible for a big share of Taiwan’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to local media. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang. Left: Damaged buildings are seen after Typhoon Morakot swept Kaohsiung county, southern Taiwan August 11, 2009.  REUTERS/Stringer))

Slow-moving Morakot stormed into Taiwan’s typhoon hall of infamy this past week, rescue teams complained, largely because clouds hovered in the hardest hit areas even after the killer storm had passed.

The clouds blocked any aerial views of mountain villages in southern Taiwan where hundreds of people are presumed dead from landslides.

Disaster officials on this western Pacific island, a veteran of raging late summer typhoons, couldn’t even confirm the biggest landslide, which buried a village that was home to more than 1,000 people, until a day after it had happened.

But Taiwan’s National Space Organization aims to change that in five to six years by designing a radiometer that could be launched into space on one of its heavier satellites, Formosat-2 or Formosat-5. Positioned around 800 km (500 miles) above earth, the radiometer would check water levels, potentially showing whether a river had suddenly changed course, said Nick Yen, a space organisation programme director.

The same radiometer could also detect changes in the sea level, hinting at tsunamis after an earthquake, for which Taiwan is also known.

“The National Space Organisation isn’t able to do this yet, but we are working on that,” Yen said in an interview. “It’s quite a useful tool for rescue operations.”

Taiwan will seek help from academia and possibly from the United States, which has already developed the technology, Yen said. He did not specify a budget but said developing the radiometer would cost more in labour than in materials. Taiwan, the world’s No. 37 space power, would share radiometer data internationally but keep the technology to itself, he said.

(Pictures - Top: Family members of flood victims look at the site of a major landslide that destroyed the mountain village of Hsiao Lin in Kaohsiung County, southern Taiwan, August 15, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer. Centre right: A destroyed home lies partially submerged in a river in Gaushu township after Typhoon Morakot swept through Pingtung county, southern Taiwan, August 14, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer. Bottom left: Taiwan’s first satellite is launched into orbit atop a U.S. Lockheed Martin Athena 1 rocket from Florida, in January 1999. REUTERS/Stringer.)

A slow-moving typhoon that collapsed a tunnel, knocked out a bridge and set off mudslides, killing 12 people in Taiwan last September, is coming back this year.

This time it’s on worldwide TV.

Typhoon Hunter, a 46-minute documentary led by Local Tiger International Co. and funded in part by the Taiwan government, tracks an effort to send weather sensing aircraft into the eye of the typhoon.  Taiwan worked with Japan and the United States, both of whose territories were hit by the same storm, to fly the dangerous mission for recording changes at the centre of the typhoon.

“This reveals for the first time the scientific secrets to the incubation, formation and fierce destructive power of typhoons,” government information Minister Su Jun-pin said in a statement.

The storm in question was Typhoon Sinlaku, which packed wind gusts as high as 162 kph (101 mph) and dumped up to 1,400 mm (55 inches) of rain in some parts of Taiwan. (For a story from the time, click here) Three died in the collapsed tunnel, one drove off the fallen bridge and others were killed in weather-driven traffic accidents. The typhoon also hurt 23 more people and prompted thousands to evacuate. 

The film debuts on June 21 on the National Geographic Channel, which has collaborated with the Taiwan government since 2004 to show short natural phenomenon films.

Typhoons, which are similar to hurricanes in the Atlantic, are swirling low-pressure systems that regularly hit Taiwan, Japan, China and the Philippines in the second half of each year. They gather strength from the warm waters of the Pacific or the South China Sea before weakening over land. 

Taiwan authorities usually call off work and school for major typhoons to minimise injury from blown debris. People are admonished to put hanging signs and potted plants indoors, while flights are cancelled and seaports shut down. The brunt of a storm usually passes within a day.  

“Typhoons are not only of interest to people in Taiwan, but lots of people want to study them,” director Jose Garcia Sanchez said at a mid-June film unveiling ceremony in Taipei. “Some don’t know what a typhoon is.”

Links: Sinlaku YouTube Video, and finally: where’s the next typhoon?

(Photo credits: top left - Paramilitary policemen run with a child as Typhoon Sinlaku hits a levee in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, September 15, 2008. About 460,000 people in east China’s Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces have been evacuated as tropical storm Sinlaku, which was weakened from a typhoon on Monday morning, was approaching, Xinhua News Agency reported. REUTERS/China Daily. Right - Rescue workers look at the collapsed Hofeng Bridge across the Dajia River in Taichung after the passing of Typhoon Sinlaku September 15, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer)

A cyclone slamming into a tropical island in the Pacific or the Caribbean sounds like unmitigated bad news – flattening homes, destroying crops, flooding towns or washing away coastlines.

But there may be a silver lining even to the worst storm clouds; hurricanes and typhoons may help — at least a bit – to slow global warming by washing huge amounts of leaves, branches, tree trunks, roots and soil into the ocean, according to research in the journal Nature Geoscience. Read a story about the findings here.

Plants soak up carbon dioxide – a non-toxic heat-trapping gas that is building up fast in the atmosphere because of human emissions of greenhouse gases – as they grow and release the stored carbon when they rot or burn.

The study in Taiwan showed that torrential rains during typhoon Mindulle in 2004 washed perhaps 0.05 percent of all carbon stored on hillsides out to sea — mixed with other debris it sinks to the seabed where it is quickly buried, trapping carbon which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

Of course, this isn’t going to save the planet from global warming – the scientists say the effect is a pinprick compared to the buildup of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants.  

And I can’t imagine that anyone suffering from a cyclone, like the Filipino man in the picture above (taken in Baguio City after typhoon Mindulle) would draw much comfort from thinking that the muddy water up to his neck might be helping to ease a global problem.  

Even so, we usually only hear about how global warming is accelerating – a thaw of Arctic ice, for instance, might expose darker sea and land that soaks up ever more heat than reflective snow and ice. So it’s good to hear every now and again that nature has ways to limit the damage.

One problem – the U.N. Climate Panel predicts that tropical cyclones may become more powerful because of global warming: what happens then?