August 26, 2019 — Japan and the United States have agreed in principle to an outline of a free trade agreement, with plans to complete it by September.
The announcement, which calls for negotiations on a bilateral trade deal, was made 25 August by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting taking place in Biarritz, France.
August 21, 2019 — New research published Aug. 19 in the journal Marine Policy suggests Japan’s fishing fleets could generate an additional $5.5 billion in annual profits while supporting a 30% increase in populations of fish in Japan’s waters by 2065, if they adopt policies that promote conservation and offer fishermen the right incentives.
Authored by scientists at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Iwate University, Norwegian School of Economics, and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, the study examines the potential effects of different approaches to managing Japan’s fisheries on catch, profits and the amounts of fish left in the water to support healthy ecosystems. The results suggest that adopting policies that incorporate science-based fisheries management into Japan’s current rights-based management system could increase profits compared to the status quo, the group said.
In December 2018 Japan passed the most significant reforms to its fisheries laws in 70 years. This new research could help shape the implementation of that law, EDF claimed.
August 2, 2019 — Japan’s Midsummer Day of the Ox, when it is traditional to eat eel to maintain stamina in the humid summer, fell on Saturday, 27 July, this year. Sales related to the day typically account for 30 to 40 percent of the country’s annual consumption of eel.
Japan’s catch of glass eels continues to decline, mostly due to the side-effects of dams and other river modifications, but closed-cycle breeding is advancing in the country. Overall, the sector is now achieving about a 10 percent survival rate.
July 2, 2019 — The following was released by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative:
On 1 July 2019, GSSI launched a 30-day public consultation on the GSSI Benchmark Report for the Marine Eco-Label Japan (MEL) scheme.
Marine Eco-Label Japan (MEL) Council applied for GSSI recognition of its MEL scheme in September 2018 and has been benchmarked against the GSSI Global Benchmark Tool on Section A (Governance), Section B (Operational Management) Section C (Aquaculture) and D (Fisheries).
The Independent Experts and the Benchmark Committee found the scheme to be in alignment with all the GSSI Essential Components. GSSI now invites comments from all stakeholders on the recommendation of the Benchmark Committee to recognize the Marine Eco-Label Japan (MEL) scheme for their Aquaculture Management Standard (Version 1.0, 2018) and Fisheries Management Standard (Version 2.0, 2018).
Following the public consultation, the Benchmark Committee, Independent Experts and MEL will process the feedback received. GSSI’s Benchmark Committee will then provide the GSSI Steering Board with a final recommendation on recognition. The Public Consultation feedback will be made publicly available after the GSSI Steering Board’s decision.
June 1, 2019 — Japan resumed commercial whale hunting on Monday after a hiatus of more than 30 years, defying calls from conservation groups to protect animals once hunted to the brink of extinction.
Now whalers, who have long depended on government subsidies for their survival, face the much tougher challenge of defying basic economic reality: The market for their product is declining while labor costs across the nation are on the rise.
Japanese production of whale meat peaked in 1962, and the taste is generally preferred by an older generation. The government also hopes to start reducing the $46 million in annual subsidies it pays to whale hunters within three years. The value of previous catches, obtained under the auspices of scientific research in the Antarctic, totaled only about a half to a third of that.
“Will whaling succeed commercially?” said Masayuki Komatsu, a former government official who oversaw Japan’s international negotiations on the subject and now works at a think tank in Tokyo. “No way.”
June 28, 2019 — The upcoming meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) in Tokyo from July 16-18 will discuss the centralization of vessel monitoring in the region, a statement from the organization said.
The environmental NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, which is set to attend the fifth annual meeting of the NPFC, has proposed the use of modern technology to combat illegal fishing as a key part of the meeting’s docket.
This includes the use of a centralized vessel monitoring system, a formal compliance monitoring scheme, and the requirement that all vessels fishing in the area must display the flag of a member nation.
June 19, 2019 — A two-day conference of scientific experts from Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, South Korea, China, Sweden, Japan, and the European Union in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk resulted in an agreement to conduct more research on Arctic fisheries.
The April meeting was the first after an agreement between the 10 countries was signed in October of last year. The legally binding accord prohibits all commercial fishing in the Central Arctic until the nations additional surveys of stocks, their sizes, and how the region’s ecosystems operate. The agreement also included a draft of a joint research plan, with details to be discussed later this year and with implemented stalled until all the participating states ratify the agreement.
There is almost no data on high Arctic stocks, as nearly all the Arctic countries have only surveyed their own 200-mile exclusive economic zones. The only known study of the high seas was conducted by scientists from the Stockholm University. Its results presented at the conference brought some surprise and made it clear that more extensive research is needed, according to Vasily Sokolov, deputy head of the Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries.
“The Arctic Ocean was supposed to contain no great marine biological resources to be of interest for commercial fisheries. But it turned out that stocks of Arctic cod seem to be there, which means that fishing there may be commercially attractive,” Sokolov said. “The density of stocks increases toward the polar cap.”
June 7, 2019 — There were only a few sharks for sale on the day the ABC was invited to the fish market in the north Japanese city of Indramayu.
“No-one breaks the rules here … when [the fishermen] catch sharks in their nets, they release them back to their habitats, if the sharks are still alive,” said the chief of the local fisheries cooperative, Darto.
However, the following day the ABC turned up unannounced and found evidence of a thriving shark industry, with workers cutting off hundreds of shark fins right there on the dock.
Walking over a carpet of shark carcasses, the auctioneer barked numbers rapid-fire into a megaphone, as a small pack of buyers crowded around him.
Among the dead animals at their feet, leaking blood from their gills, were endangered hammerhead sharks, with their heads carved into a point to hide their distinctive mallet-shaped snouts.
Further down the dock, juvenile sharks were being stacked like firewood into trucks, and taken away for export.
June 7, 2019 — The 47th United States-Japan Natural Resources Scientific Symposium “Marine Aquaculture in a Changing Environment” will be held November 12 to 15, 2019, in Okinawa, Japan. It will be the last year for the three-year theme, “Marine Aquaculture in a Changing Environment.”
The symposium is part of a regular collaboration between NOAA Fisheries and the Japanese Fisheries Research and Education Agency, organized through the U.S.-Japan Natural Resources (UJNR) Aquaculture Panel. The panel is an annual meeting framework that allows scientists to share research results, new technology, and approaches to sustainable seafood farming. Last year’s meeting took place in Mystic, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Mike Rust, a NOAA Fisheries scientist and the U.S. chair of the UJNR Aquaculture Panel, told SeafoodSource the exchanges represented an important path to improving the state of U.S. domestic aquaculture.
“The learning opportunities are tremendous on a number of fronts. The United States is behind in both the scale of marine aquaculture and the science and technology effort to support a sustainable industry. This partnership gives U.S. researchers a chance to understand where Japan is going in aquaculture and learn from Japan’s experience,” Rust said. “The low-hanging fruit in some ways is to look around the world to see where other people are on the technical side.”
May 28, 2019 — After a 30-year break, Japan will resume commercial whaling in July.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced on 26 December, 2018, the country would withdraw from the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW). The announcement was timed to meet a six-month notification requirement.
By beating a 1 January deadline for notifying the U.S. State Department – which in turn notified the convention’s governing body, the International Whaling Commission (ICW) – Japan is able to resume whaling this July.
The relevant text comes from Article 11 of the convention, stipulating the timing for any country withdrawing from the ICRW.
“Any Contracting Government may withdraw from this Convention on 30th June, of any year by giving notice on or before 1 January, of the same year to the depository government [the USA], which upon receipt of such a notice shall at once communicate it to the other contracting governments,” it states.
The move was taken in frustration with the IWC, which has abandoned its originally-stated purpose of scientific management of the whale stock as a harvestable resource, according to Japan.
“Recognizing that the whale stocks are susceptible of natural increases if whaling is properly regulated, and that increases in the size of whale stocks will permit increases in the number of whales which may be captured without endangering these natural resources,” the convention states.