eco otaku

Its unfortunate that a number of Japanese industries are recently being scrutinized. Japanese car maker Toyota has had a number of problems in recent months which have involved large recalls of their vehicles. At the same time, images of slaughtering of Dolphins were splashed across the worlds TVs when the film makers won Academy awards for best documentary of their depictions of the yearly hunt at Taiji. Then there is the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean which has come to a peak in world attention this year with the help of anti-whaling organisations. Another major issue for Japan and the environment concerns the mass harvesting of Blue Fin Tuna.

The past few weeks, the international meeting of CITIES has been held to consider action on the worlds threatened species. Blue Fin Tuna, a large fish and part of a million dollar fishing industry, is a major topic of discussion. Due to increase in demand, largely due to its popularity in Japan as Sashimi, the species numbers have dramatically reduced to 80 percent of previous stocks. Reductions on catches have been enforced in the past few years but have proved to make little difference.

Bluefin Tuna was once only fished commercially by rod in a traditional method called Ipponzuri, literally meaning rod fishing. According to Justin Norrie from an article from Australian paper, The Age, the practice saw fishermen catch between 3 and 5 fish a year. These large fish could fetch high prices then, so the fish didn’t need to be harvested in large numbers to be profitable. However the industry changed when large fishing trawlers developed the ability to capture large numbers of these fish in one session. This practice of fishing, is what has lead to the overfishing for this species. The World for Wildlife recent wrote a report that claims that this fish could be extinct by 2012 in worst case scenario.

A move to ban the fishing for the species angers money hungry industries that have already reaped massive profits from this over exploited resource. Since Japan consumes 80 percent of the fish at Sushi restaurants, much of the criticism for a ban is coming from major companies that have vested interests rather than speaking on cultural arguments.

In Justin Norrie’s article from The Age newspaper, comments some of the criticism against the overfishing is actually coming from within Japan from small ipponzuri fishermen that still survive by fishing with their rods.

”The government lets the trawlers come through and take everything – the adults and the juvenile fish together,” said Teruaki Yabuta, head of Nikko Fisheries at Omaezaki, in Shizuoka Prefecture. ”The trawlers are plundering our seas. It’s not sustainable. If the government won’t regulate it, then the local guys won’t survive.”

While a ban on the species would be very beneficial to the species and is the preferred option for environmental groups, some countries such as Australia suggest that much harsher limits of captures should be enforced instead. Perhaps a complete ban on fishing methods that prove most detrimental to the population should be banned, allowing for a small trickle of ipponzuri supply the market.

Yesterday, key countries struggled to get support for the proposed ban, arguing that tighter regulations will be agreed on to support the fish’s survival. It will be interesting to see what steps the industry will take to secure the health of these populations considering that some environmentally groups such as WWF expect the species to go extinct within 3 years.

Sources -

The Age article