A new Taiwanese law requiring public environmental science projects to disclose their test results has turned a celebrated reef survey into a fierce argument over what counts as a discovery. The first results, released on Tuesday, show that TeraNovea Fieldworks’ portable DNA test correctly identified 94% of reference samples—but also produced enough uncertain signals to unsettle its boldest claims.
The company says its test detected 23 reef-associated species near Penghu, an island county in the Taiwan Strait, including eight with no local record in decades. A separate field team recovered 17 of those signals in repeat samples. None, however, has yet been confirmed by direct observation, and researchers say traces of DNA can travel beyond the habitat of the animal that shed them.
A law opens the results
The Coastal Science Disclosure Act took effect on Tuesday, obliging publicly funded environmental projects to publish validation methods and raw results in a government register. Taiwan’s legislature passed it last year after disputes over competing claims from private survey contractors. The register’s first release includes TeraNovea’s test data and the methods used by an outside university laboratory.
Titas Jaunė, a marine geneticist at the fictional Taiwan Coastal Research Centre, said the figures were a breakthrough and a caution in the same breath. “For the first time, people can see the test perform against samples whose identity we already know,” she said. “That is a real win. But a DNA trace is not a photograph of a fish.”
The company’s founder, Mona Sachdev, called the validation a “historic step for island science” and said the test could help small research teams survey reefs too large for divers to cover. TeraNovea received NT$86 million (about €2.4 million) in public contracts over three years. Sachdev said its field results were labelled detections, not proof that every species had established a resident population.
What the test can prove
The outside laboratory tested 240 blinded samples, including known reef species and water samples with no target DNA. It correctly classified 94% of the known samples, below the company’s advertised 99.7% figure. The lab also found six false positives, prompting scientists to say the test needs refinement before its species list guides conservation decisions.
Bohuslav Michalcová, who advises a Penghu fishing cooperative, said the news had already stirred hopes and worries on the islands. Fishers welcomed a stronger case for protecting reefs but feared that an unverified species list could bring sudden limits on where they work. Taiwan’s environment ministry said the results alone would not change fishing rules.
Researchers now plan a second survey during the winter season, when cooler conditions may help distinguish persistent populations from stray DNA. The coastal centre will publish its sampling map by 15 December, while the company has agreed to submit a revised accuracy estimate. For Jaunė, the law’s first test is already a success: a disputed claim is now open to scrutiny, not sealed inside a sales pitch.
