January 16, 2020 — The state of Maine is allowing nine new people to participate in the fishing industry that harvests baby eels, which are among the most valuable natural resources in the state.
Baby eels, called elvers, are harvested so they can be used as seed stock by Asian aquaculture companies. They are typically eventually used in Japanese food. The eels were worth more than $2,300 per pound in Maine in 2018.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times
January 7, 2020 — One fish, two fish, red fish… million-dollar tuna fish.
Japanese businessman Kiyoshi Kimura, who has dubbed himself the “Tuna King,” purchased a 608-pound fish for $1.8 million at a Sunday auction.
The blue fin fetched the second-highest price in history at auction Sunday, Japanese Broadcasting Corporation NHK reported.
Caught in Aomori, a political region of Japan, the giant fish sold for 193 million yen — equivalent to nearly $1.8 million.
“Yes, this is expensive, isn’t it? I want our customers to eat very tasty ones this year, too,” Kimura said after the auction, as reported by Agence France-Presse.
November 27, 2019 — The world’s major fishing nations have agreed “modest” quota cuts for the under-pressure Atlantic Bigeye tuna but critics say more should be done to protect an important food resource.
Scientists warn that unless the catch is reduced, stocks of Thunnus obesus—especially prized for sashimi in Japan and canned worldwide—could collapse within years.
A scientific report prepared for last year’s failed meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) showed numbers had plummeted to less than 20 percent of historic levels.
This is only about half what is needed to support a “maximum sustainable yield”—the largest catch that can be taken without compromising the long-term stability of a species.
Going into the meeting in Majorca, Spain, ICCAT had a headline quota of 65,000 tonnes, allocated to the seven groups, including Japan and the EU, with the largest catch.
When smaller members were included, this rose to around 77,000 tonnes, pushing the Bigeye further into the danger zone, according to NGOs.
November 13, 2019 — Lined up along the side of their boat, the fishermen hauled a huge, heavy net up from swelling waves. At first, a few small jellyfish emerged, then a piece of plastic. Then net, and more net. Finally, all the way at the bottom: a small thrashing mass of silvery salmon.
It was just after dawn at the height of the autumn fishing season, but something was wrong.
“When are the fish coming?” boat captain Teruhiko Miura asked himself.
The salmon catch is collapsing off Japan’s northern coast, plummeting by about 70 percent in the past 15 years. The disappearance of the fish coincides with another striking development: the loss of a unique blanket of sea ice that dips far below the Arctic to reach this shore.
The twin impacts — less ice, fewer salmon — are the products of rapid warming in the Sea of Okhotsk, wedged between Siberia and Japan. The area has warmed in some places by as much as 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times, making it one of the fastest-warming spots in the world, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the nonprofit organization Berkeley Earth.
November 4, 2019 — There’s new evidence that a widely used family of pesticides called neonicotinoids, already controversial because they can be harmful to pollinators, could be risky for insects and fish that live in water, too.
The evidence comes from Lake Shinji, which lies near Japan’s coast, next to the Sea of Japan.
Masumi Yamamuro, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Japan, says the lake is famous for its views of the setting sun. “It’s amazingly beautiful,” she says.
Lake Shinji was also the site of thriving fisheries. People harvested clams, and eels, and small fish called smelts. But, Yamamuro says, about a decade ago, people noticed that fish populations had declined drastically. “I was asked to investigate the cause of this decrease,” she says.
It was a puzzle. Yamamuro says the decline in fish populations did not seem to coincide with anything that people were keeping track of, like the lake’s salinity, or levels of pollution.
But she noticed something curious. One kind of fish in the lake was doing fine. This one had a more diverse diet; it could eat algae, as well as tiny insects in the water. The eels and the smelts that were dying off relied on insects and crustaceans for food. And that food source was vanishing.
October 21, 2019 — A new report from the nonprofit Planet Tracker is urging banks and investors to price the hidden risk of unsustainable operations by Japanese seafood companies into their lending decisions.
Planet Tracker is a project of Investor Watch, a nonprofit company with the goal of encouraging “impact investing,” or aligning capital markets with social and ecological sustainability. Mark Campanale, a co-founder of Investor Watch, formerly worked for asset management companies and was involved in the creation of several responsible investment funds. He also provided input to the current report.
September 10, 2019 — Japan’s proposal to increase its bluefin catch quota was rejected by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) last week, Japan Times reported.
The annual meeting of WCPFC, which is responsible for setting Pacific bluefin catch limits, took place in Portland, US, from Sept. 4-6.
Japan and South Korea each sought a quota expansion, citing a recovery in stocks, a proposal that is opposed by conservation NGOs.
Given a recent recovery in Pacific bluefin tuna population, Japan sought a 20% expansion of its 4,882-metric-ton large bluefin tuna quota, and a 10% hike in the small fish quota of 4,007t.
September 9, 2019 — The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) Northern Committee met in Portland, Oregon, last week to discuss two proposals to increase catch limits on Pacific bluefin. Despite continued overfishing of the depleted species, the Committee recommended changes to the Pacific bluefin management measure that will lead to an increase in catch for 2020. However, The Northern Committee will need to reconvene at the WCPFC annual meeting in December to officially adopt the outcomes of this meeting, as the meeting failed to reach the required quorum due to the absence of four members.
The Northern Committee recommended that next year, Chinese Taipei be allowed to transfer 300mt of their adult catch limit to Japan. All countries will also be able to roll over up to 17 percent of their 2019 quota to be used to increase their catch of both adult and juvenile fish in 2020. This means that Japan will be able to catch hundreds of tons of additional fish in 2020 from a stock that is at just 3.3 percent of its unfished size and is just two years into a 17-year rebuilding plan.
September 5, 2019 — A rift between Japan and South Korea over increases in catch quotas for Pacific bluefin tuna is likely to put a spanner in the works at the current international conference to control tuna stocks Jiji Press reported.
The annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), which is responsible for setting Pacific bluefin catch limits, is taking place in Portland, US, from Sept. 4-6.
Japan and South Korea each seek a quota expansion, citing a recovery in stocks, a proposal that is opposed by conservation NGOs.
September 6, 2019 — A new study has discovered that a model optimizing Japanese catch levels for profitability could see a 3.5-fold increase in annual profits and a 30 percent increase in biomass.
The new study – “Alternative outcomes under different fisheries management policies: A bioeconomic analysis of Japanese fisheries” –will appear in the journal Marine Policy (October 2019, Article 103646) and compares modeled outcomes under different fishery management policies. The study is the first of its kind apply profit modeling to Japanese fisheries, and compares the model with a simply maximum sustainable yield (MSY) model.