The North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC), an inter-governmental organization established by the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the North Pacific Ocean, held its annual meeting from 16 to 18 July in Tokyo, Japan. Setting a quota for Pacific saury was, once again, a major topic of this year’s meeting, according to the commission.
The current members making up the NPFC include Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the United States, and Vanuatu. A major goal for Japan at the meeting was to reach an agreement on a quota for Pacific saury. In recent years, Japanese saury catches – once stable at 200,000 to 300,000 metric tons (MT) annually – have fallen to around 100,000 MT. In 2017, only 84,000 MT were landed – a record low for the species in the region.
The fall in saury landings is partially due to warmer ocean waters, which keep the schools in cooler waters Northeast of Hokkaido and outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) longer than in the past.
The decline in catch is also partially due to increased fishing pressure from Taiwan and China in the area. Taiwanese ships have targeted saury with large vessels, with a gross tonnage of over 1,000 tons, for some time, while China has been active only since 2013, also with large vessels. Saury was previously an unfamiliar fish in China. However, with looser visa requirements in Japan, more Chinese vessels have tried the catching fish, which has now become popular. Stocks rebounded in 2018, but Japan’s share of the catch was smaller than that of Taiwan, while that of China continued to grow.
At this year’s NPFC meeting, a loose annual quota of 330,000 MT in the open sea was finally agreed upon and will take effect as of 2020. “Open sea” means outside of Japan’s EEZ, so it mainly applies to Taiwan and China.
Japan’s saury fishery is mainly shore-based smaller vessels and they do not find it economical in terms of time and fuel to travel repeatedly to the area outside the EEZ – instead they concentrate on Japanese waters. The quota in Japan’s EEZ is 226,250 MT, for a combined total of 556,250 MT.
The new quota is so large as to have little impact on overfishing, since the total catch of all countries in 2018 was 440,000 MT. But it is significant in that China had, for two years, resisted requests from Japan and Taiwan to set any quota. For Japan, just getting China to agree to any quota is a step forward. China, on the other hand, may wish to to establish a large historical catch as the basis for any future allocation of quota before agreeing to any meaningful reductions.
In early July, wholesale prices of saury in Kushiro, Hokkaido – at JPY 21,060 (USD 195.57, EUR 173.70) per kilogram – were about 40 percent cheaper than the record high price of 35,640 (USD 330.96, EUR 293.95) at this time last year. The fall season in Japan’s EEZ, when Japanese fishing begins in earnest, starts in late August.
