Dwindling Tuna Supply Makes Japan Compromise On “Fishing Freedom”ff

No country may love tuna as much as Japan. Every year, Japanese consume about 600,000 tons of tuna, about 15 percent of the world’s entire catch. So when the tuna haul began to decrease drastically worldwide due to indiscriminate fishing, all fingers pointed to Japan.

Tuna resources in the western Atlantic Ocean, one of Japan's major bluefin tuna fishing areas, declined to 5,000 tons in 2001, about one-tenth of the amount roughly 30 years ago.

According to a Fisheries Agency survey in fiscal 2005, tuna is either “over caught” or “caught to the limit” all over the world.

Since about the time when the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea went into effect in 1994, controlled tuna fishing has become the global trend.

Under the convention, which Japan ratified in 1996, tuna fishing is controlled in five areas including the Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Japan, however, which traditionally emphasizes “fishing freedom”, has not been very active in the international trend to promote fishing control.

This attitude is symbolized by the country's handling of the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Convention.

Throughout 2001 and 2002, Japan boycotted preparatory meetings for the convention over concern that South Pacific countries, which did not conduct remote-water fishing, would dominate the talks and impose restrictions on Japan in the convention's final draft.

The convention went into effect in 2004 without Japan's ratification, and the Western Central Pacific Ocean Fisheries Commission was set up based on the convention.

Japan joined the convention in July 2005 after it ensured that its opinion “had been accepted and the decision-making procedure at the commission had improved.”

However, many other countries did not welcome such assertiveness. “At that time, Japan showed both media and nongovernmental organizations the country was unwilling to accept stronger fishing restrictions while continuing to catch a huge amount of tuna all over the world,” said Waseda University professor Moritaka Hayashi, former chief of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Fisheries Department.

Currently, Japan is trying to take the lead in the international fishing arena by shifting its policy to fishing control and management.

In January, five international tuna fishing management organizations and representatives from 70 countries and territories are expected to attend the first meeting of the joint conference of the regional fishing management organization in Kobe, Japan. Japan led the establishment of the body.

In the global arena, Japan is now required to balance its interest as a fishing country with global cooperation in marine resource management.