Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries Statistical Yearbook for 2017, released in April, showed a decline in domestic landings for a fourth year to 4.304 million metric tons (MT), down 1.3 percent from 2016.
Record low catches of Japanese flying squid (down 13 percent) and Pacific saury (down 27 percent) were main causes of the decline, the Nippon Keizai Shimbun reported. These two species are mostly caught off Japan’s northwest coast, out of the ports of Kushiro and Kesennuma. Scientists believe warmer waters due to climate change has altered their migration patterns, keeping them in international waters northeast of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) longer, where Chinese and Taiwanese fleets target them.
In response to declines caused by overfishing, the government is considering setting a total allowable catch (TAC) for more species. Currently, a total allowable effort (TAE) approach is taken for most species, for example, by limiting the size and the number of fishing vessels.
Japan’s catch of all wild fish reached a record low of 3.258 million MT, a drop of 0.2 percent from the previous year. Ocean-farmed fish output fell 4.6 percent to 985,000 MT, while freshwater fishing and aquaculture combined declined for a second year to 62,000 MT, down 1.7 percent.
On the other hand, harvests of mackerel and sardines, the two top species by volume, rose to 515,000 MT, up two percent, and 506,000 MT, up 34 percent, respectively.
Photo courtesy of Ocean Outcomes
