Safety Catch

After expanding its fishing grounds from inshore to nearshore and out to the open seas, Japan would eventually deplete or exhaust fish stocks to the extent that it became necessary to change from catching marine species to protecting and cultivating them. The Basic Law on Fishery was established in 2001 to effect just that change.

In Japan, prefectural authorities license fishermen's cooperatives to fish in their respective areas. These cooperatives are producing excellent results in sustainable fishery management as fishing communities that function locally by setting catch limits and farming fish.

In many developing countries, either there are no fishermen's cooperatives or the existing cooperatives do not function properly. So while marine products are a vital source of protein in these nations, as well as an important source of revenue, problems are arising, such as indiscriminate fishing and fish going bad during transportation, which inevitably results in fluctuations in fish supply and income.

To help fisheries administrators in developing countries tackle these issues, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has since FY2004 (until FY2008) been providing a training program called Planning of Fisheries Community Development, which draws on the experience of Japan's fisheries cooperatives. The main elements of the sessions are lectures on inshore fishing, a tour of the activities of fishermen's cooperatives, and preparation of action plans for local fisheries operations after their return to their countries.

From the Philippines to the Côte d'Ivoire

This summer, eleven fisheries administrators representing eleven countries in South America, Africa, Oceania, and South east Asia studied in Japan over a period of three months to the end of September.

Lanzuela Noemie San Buenaventura from the Philippines is helping to prepare a business plan for the area along San Miguel Bay of the island of Luzon. There are seven towns along the coast, and the coral reef in the Bay used to provide the local population with seafood in abundance. How ever, the catch in the Bay area has been declining in recent years. This is because local and other fishermen have fished recklessly, some using trawling nets, which is prohibited. Another factor is increasing contamination. Refuse from the towns flows into the bay, while earth and sand from felled forests flows into the bay from the local rivers.

Feeling under threat, local fishermen have finally started voluntary management of marine products in recent years, by establishing preserves and collecting garbage. Noemie hopes to support this action.

In the training session at the Miura Fisheries Cooperative in Kanagawa prefecture, she learned that fishermen's cooperatives in Japan set limits on the lengths of the shellfish and fish that can be caught and put restrictions on the fishing season. Noemie says that the fishermen's cooperatives in the Philippines are small and private, and inadequate for resource management. She hopes to use the proper resource management techniques employed by the Japanese fishermen's cooperatives as a reference in drawing up her business plan.

Farming is another way of avoiding a depletion of marine products.

Kouassi Seydou from Côte d'Ivoire is getting ready to prepare a business plan for farming in the lagoon of a lake that flows into the ocean. Indiscriminate fishing has become a problem in Côte d'Ivoire as well. To solve the problem, the government has created three nurseries around the lagoon to farm tilapia and catfish. However, there are no fishermen's cooperatives to support the farming and the number of experts is limited. The country also lacks funds.

At the Miura Fisheries Cooperative, Kouassi learned that fishermen's cooperatives in Japan instructed fishermen how to farm fish and provided finance for the farming with the co-op dues collected from members. "It is an advantage that many young people in Côte d'Ivoire aim to become fishermen. I want to form a local fishermen's cooperative for the lagoon as soon as possible and entrust them with farming in the nurseries around it," he says.

Iinuma Mitsuo of the consulting firm IC Net, to which JICA annually contracts out the training for the Planning of Fisheries Community Development, says, "I've heard that in some communities in developing nations fishermen and farmers have come together and succeeded in raising catfish by putting them in the rice paddies, where they eat the noxious insects. I hope that the trainees will apply what they have learned in Japan to their own situations."