David Pilling, famous columnist, wrote when it came to Japan’s predilection for fish, globalisation initially worked in its favour. Fish is so popular in Japan that Japan Airlines began a lucrative trade flying freshly caught tuna from America’s Atlantic seaboard to Tokyo. Until then those fish, highly prized in Japan, were pet food in the US. Such initiatives brought the Japanese a huge variety of fish all year round.
It is found that Japan is the world’s biggest importer of tuna fish by some way. It has gone from being a net exporter in 1964 to importing more than 40 per cent of its fish requirements today. But Japanese buyers are now regularly outbid in auctions. Each year, about 100m tonnes of fish, 5 per cent of the 2bn tonnes of seafood biomass, are hauled from the oceans.
According to a recent study published in Science revealed that many conservationists espouse “peak fish” theories, suggesting that catches have reached a limit, or gone beyond. It is sure that Japan’s fishing industry faces crisis. The number of fishermen has sunk to 200,000 from a peak of 1m. It is said that too many boats chasing too few fish have devastated fish resources.
By 2006, according to the Japan Economic and Social Research Institute, more than half of Japan’s fishing grounds had dangerously low stocks. Masayuki Komatsu, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, says Japan needs a science-based quota system and a sustainable fisheries plan predicated on the concept that fish are a common property of the Japanese people not bona vacantia.
