Crab fishermen along the Sea of Japan are fretting over low stocks of young snow crab and fishing conflicts with South Korea.
The Nikkei Shimbun notes concern among Japanese crab fishing vessel operators that surveys by the National Fisheries Research Institutes may result in lower limits on the catch in the Sea of Japan in future years. Although the catch of larger crabs has been good, there are fewer small crabs.
In Hyogo Prefecture, the catch in November and December of 2018 was 358 metric tons (MT), 24 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier. However, a survey by the Japan Sea National Fisheries Research Institute, based in Niigata, reported that the Sea of Japan snow crab quota will likely be halved from about 22,000 MT in 2018 years to about 12,000 MT in 2021 due to poor recruitment.
Fishermen speculate that the strong Tsushima Current this year may have carried smaller crabs further offshore, or that warmer water may have allowed more tuna and Spanish mackerel to migrate to the area, and that they are eating the smaller crabs.
Japanese fishermen could in principle fish extend their fishing to an area around Takeshima Island, which is claimed and occupied by South Korea, which calls it Dokdo. The United States refers to them as the Liancourt Rocks, and this is really a better description, as they are really just two large rocks with a few surrounding outcrops.
By agreement, both sides are supposed to be allowed to fish in an area around the island, but as a practical matter, the Japanese side cannot do so, as South Korea enforces a 12-mile exclusion zone around the islands. Additionally, the two sides use gear types that interfere with each other. Korea uses crab pots (actually large baskets), while Japan uses drag nets along the bottom. When Japanese vessels drag, they get hung up on the Korean crab pots.
The diplomatic history of the islands is contentious. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), grants each country the access to fisheries and marine resources within a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and grants it the responsibility for resource management and prevention of pollution. Due to the unresolved Takeshima Island issue, Japan and Korea are unable to agree to an EEZ line. In order to avoid conflict in their fisheries, the two sides agreed to the Japan-Korea Fishery Agreement, which came into force in 1999. Both parties agreed to set up “Provisional Zones,” pending demarcation. Japan and Korea are both supposed to be able to fish in the Provisional Zones. However, due to the differences in fishing gear used, Japanese fishing boats have a very limited area of the zone in which to fish.
An informal public-private partnership meeting was held in Seoul last July including the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Fisheries Agency, and a group of drag-net fishermen from Hyogo and Tottori prefectures, but dialogue over the management of the Provisional Zones failed.
Meanwhile, import prices of snow crab from North America and Russia were at record highs in the run-up to the New Year holiday. Frozen snow crab legs from Alaska were around JPY 2,100 (USD 19.21, EUR 16.83) per kilogram, double the price of five years ago.
