00:00These oyster farmers are tying shells together and preparing to send them offshore for cultivation.
00:06It's a lot of hard work made more difficult by declining oyster yields.
00:11Climate change and other environmental factors have hit oyster survival rates hard in recent years,
00:17with yields down about 50 percent from over the past decade.
00:21To tackle the issue, the country's Fisheries Research Institute
00:25has been working with farmers in southern Taiwan to boost oyster survival rates.
00:29We have been working with the fisheries for about three years.
00:33It's like every year, we will provide some information to look at the data.
00:39We will find out what we need to do in the season, what kind of harvest we need to do
00:44in the season.
00:45Researchers also uncovered another factor behind the oyster's decline, a parasite infection.
00:52Data shows that higher water temperatures significantly increase the infection rate.
00:57And with environmental stress and disease overlapping,
01:00their main cause are the large-scale oyster deaths.
01:04To help reduce infection rates,
01:06experts have been guiding oyster farmers on better cultivation methods.
01:33According to government data, the parasite infection rate has dropped
01:37from almost 30 percent two years ago to 12 percent.
01:40That's boosting oyster survival by about 10 percent.
01:44And farmers say this has also improved water flow, allowing for better quality oysters.
01:52Now, with the oyster population slowly recovering,
01:55authorities hope this will help the domestic oyster industry back on track.
01:59Howard Zhang and Sunny Chi for Tawn Plus.
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