Japan is finally beginning to manage its fisheries resources, endangered by overfishing. Most fish sold commercially are imported or farmed.
Fish, the mainstay of our diet, is becoming scarce. Last year, the catches of don’t think [saurel du Pacifique] reached their lowest level for the third consecutive year.
The government is rushing to take steps to better manage the resource. The fishing law has been thoroughly revised, and a new law aimed at controlling illegal fishing will soon be enacted. The Pacific bluefin tuna has been removed from the list of endangered species, the quotas imposed by all the countries having made it possible to reconstitute the stocks. For Japan’s efforts to promote sustainable fishing to bear fruit, consumers must also be made aware.
Bars are returned to the water
We are in Tokyo Bay, habitat of Edo-fishthere is [littéralement “devant Edo”, ancien nom de Tokyo], at the end of November. On the bridge of Daiden Marupurse seine fishing boat from Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture [à l’est de la capitale]the tank is filled with konoshiro [alose tachetée] silver. There are bigger fish, bars in the spawning period, which the fishermen put back in the water.
The fishing boss, Kazuhiko Ono, 62, has been involved in the sustainable management of sea bass stocks since 2015:
We keep hearing that the fish are fewer and fewer and smaller and smaller. If we continue like this, there will soon be no more bars in Tokyo Bay. We want to preserve good fish for the children of tomorrow.”
The drying up of fishery resources is not new. In the 1980s, sardine fishing was booming in Tokyo Bay, but the species has all but disappeared in recent years. For Kazuhiko Ono, “fishing in all directions without knowing the stocks, it’s like going shopping without knowing what’s in your wallet”. Funabashi’s fisheries have refocused on bass. The city is today the first supplier in Japan, but if the stocks are not managed, the species will meet the same fate as the sardine.
Kazuhiko Ono’s commitment to sustainable fishing dates back to Tokyo’s bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games [de 2020, qui se sont finalement déroulés à l’été 2021]. “We wanted to offer athletes fish from Edo-
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Etsuko Nagayama
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Founded in 1872 as Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun is the oldest Japanese daily newspaper. It took the current name in 1943 during a merger with theOsaka Mainichi Shimbun. Centrist, the
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