I last wrote on Japan in the May WF issue, following the series of disasters - earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima meltdown. Since then, the surviving NE Japan's fishermen and its fishing industry have been struggling to stay afloat and gradually return to anything that resembles normalcy. Recently and quite timely, Mitsutaku Makino of the Japan's Fisheries Research Agency produced a textbook "Fisheries Management in Japan", (Springer, 2011, www.springer.com, 200 p.; US$129, GBP 90, EUR 100). This book will help non-Japanese readers to grasp the depth of the wounds the country endures, because Japan is world's leading fishing country and the fishing industry is playing a major economic and social role in the Japanese society, and according to Mr.Makino, it's the first English book in over 20 years on social aspects of Japanese fisheries.

The Japanese management system with its large community-based coops has always intrigued me, not less because the attempts by many development agencies to implant Western cooperative system in developing countries had been in most cases unsuccessful, while the Japanese coops seemed to operate satisfactorily. Fishermen and related workers who visited the Japanese coastal fisheries, always returned with positive impressions.

Bryan Pierce wrote in 2002 on the FISHFOLK discussion list: "I have travelled with commercial fishermen from Australia, and they would have taken the Japanese system home in their suitcases if they could have!" And: "What strikes me about the Japanese approach is that it seems to be "grass-roots" driven. Western systems, in my experience, tend to a "top down" approach heavily dependent on coercive action, and too often without either consent of the governed or much reference to reality.  My experience is that the Japanese approach is able to react far more quickly and has greater practical success". 

The present book's author seems to be of a similar opinion. "Due to the complexity of the system and its intensive nature – writes Makino – fisheries coordination and resource conservation cannot be implemented effectively in a top-down, command-and control manner".

For some 1,300 years, Japan has been committed to its own management system, which however transformed with time remained quite different from Western variants. Nowadays, some 190,000 fishermen, which form almost 90% of the total, operate in inshore and coastal waters, supplying some 62 kg per capita of sea-food or 55% of the average total protein intake to almost 130 mn Japanese people, who're the world's most obsessive fish-eaters. Doubtless, their fishery management system persevered in the teeth of the dynamics of time. Not just that; unlike some other systems… it's working!                  

The main difference between the "western" and the Japanese approaches consists in the community-oriented management of coastal fishery resources, where authority has been conferred to local people. This, in accordance with guiding concept of the government's fisheries management, namely, that it should be planned and executed by the resource users themselves. But, also in the management of offshore, industrial fisheries, while the national government plays a principal role in the plans and rules making, fisheries organizations participate in their implementation. 

In inshore and coastal fisheries of sedentary or locally stable species, at the community/municipality level, the management is controlled by Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCA). In cases of widely distributed species, there're Fisheries Coordinating Committees, in which the government is playing more pronounced role, according with respective federations of local FCAs. 

Another form of participatory management consists of Fisheries Management Organizations (FMO), which are groups of fishermen who are targeting the same species or are employing similar fishing gear. They may be organized within FCAs, or consist of fishermen from several neighbouring FCAs, or even from several prefectures. The FMO-based management is growing (there're 1,738 FMOs in Japan – an over 13% increase since 2003).

As far as conservation of the resources goes, "local fishing is an integral component of local ecosystems, rather than a threatening intrusion into "pristine ecosystems". Therefore… local fishers play a core role in local ecosystem conservation activities, and public citizens are positively participating in such activities".

The following list of the book's 10 chapters would give the potential reader a good idea of what to expect: 1 – the Introduction gives a general information on the country, its fisheries and their associated institutions; 2 – A Brief Institutional History of Japanese Fisheries Management; 3 – Japanese Fisheries Today;    4 – Fisheries Management in Coastal Areas; 5 – Fisheries Management in Offshore Areas;       6 – Institutional Relationship Between Japanese Fisheries Management and the Ecosystem Approach;     7 – Marine Protected Areas; 8 – The UNESCO World Natural Heritage List and Local Fisheries;              9 – Comprehensive Management and Future Scenarios for Japanese Fisheries; 10 – Concluding Discussion.

Japanese traditional management has the form of input and technical controls. Presently, TAC is directed at only 8, mostly pelagic species. Based on the results of seaborne fishing surveys, it's set in a participatory process that involves fishermen's organizations, and prefectural and national authorities. TAC is mentioned also with respect to the dredge fishery for sea cucumbers, where it was set by the fishermen themselves. The author explains also why individual quota systems are costly, crude and hardly adjustable to the species life cycle, and unable to follow large fluctuations and assessment errors, which lowers their utility. It appears that they've got in Japan a well working fisheries management without the so idolized in the West and South individual and tradable quotas, catch shares, etc. 

This book should be read by every scholar and student interested in the Japan's way in involving producers and their organizations in the management of their resources.  Also all those who're involved in fisheries management in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand should consider it as an obligatory reading, and see how things could be done without alienating and dislocating fishermen from their jobs and bleeding fishing communities, by making their services to fisheries irrelevant. And, above all, my personal recommendation to the NOAA's head and the EU's Fisheries Commissioner: please, read this book. 

                                                          

Japanese small-scale bottom trawler

 

M.Ben-Yami                                                                                                                                 WORLD FISHING & AQUACULTURE    October 2015

 

Big Brother is Watching You

 

The growing powers of state management of fisheries, and the introduction of more and more laws, regulations, and other restrictions controlling commercial fishing operations, keep concocting a complex system of inspection and monitoring. Big Brother will be watching all fishermen from masttop, if not from space. Bad news for "fish pirates", while, hopefully, not hurting honest, legally fishing people. Perhaps even helping them, especially when they have to be located while in trouble.  Still…  

Now, the high seas serve as a "no-man's land" to many hundreds of fishing vessels. Many national territorial waters are illegally exploited by brazen skippers. Hence, the fishing industry and law-abiding fishermen are faced with a problem either to join the illegal, cheating party, or keep bearing financial losses, due to unfair market competition, and having the "pirates" whisking from under their noses fish that they've paid for the right to catch them. Here's where the Big Brother comes in as the sword-bearing Angel of justice and vengeance.

 

Joint venture.  The Orwellian metaphor comes to mind also in view of a recently set up partnership between the NGOs Sky Truth and Oceana with Google in designing and initiating a system aimed at control and possible prevention of "pirate" fishing operations, employing a technology able to locate, track down and map from space illegal fishing going on in the world's oceans.

Global Fishing Watch (GFW) is the product of this joint venture. Still a prototype, it's an interactive web tool enabling anyone to observe the global fishing fleet in real time. GFW will reveal the intensity of fishing effort around the world, although it's only one of the factors contributing to decline of fisheries resources. It will keep a watchful eye on where each individual vessel is operating, and monitor the amounts and composition of catches. Using a global feed of vessel locations extracted from Automatic Identification System (AIS) it'd track data collected by satellite, revealing the movement of vessels over time and space, while automatically classifying the patterns of movement as either “fishing” or “non-fishing” activity.

 

It seems, however that the GFW would be joined by other Big Brothers, all looking over us to keep us well-behaving.  

In USA. NMFS, the U.S. Fisheries Service, considers direct information from seaborne vessels "critical for the responsible management and conservation of living marine resources". Collection of this information has been assigned to on-board observers-monitors sailing on commercial fishing vessels. They report directly to NMFS. The observers are employees of private companies contracted by NMFS and trained before deployment. In 2013, 917 observers were deployed for 79,000 sea days by ten contract providers for six fishery observer programs in 47 fisheries. They'll personally monitor the catches size and composition and see that the on-board monitoring technology is not switched off. So, if you're not careful enough, don't wonder if you come home only to face your wife asking angrily about your kissing the female observer…

 

Recently the U.S. Government decided to charge fishermen with paying the monitors' wages and to program income from fines in its budget. In Massachusetts, Governor, Senators and all Congressmen called the national administration to reverse this decision and continue the funding of at-sea monitoring. Otherwise, fishermen will have to bear the full cost of the monitoring programme, including fines. Bob Jones of the U.S. Southeast Fishermen Association thinks that with budgeting of fishing fines anyone can logically assume that NOAA law enforcement officers got to hustle-up enough fines to prevent budgetary shortfall.

India. Navy and Coast Guard have been demanding for years to implement a programme to monitor fishing boats operations, and now Kerala State may set up a fishing boats tracking system against infiltration threat through the sea, and to assist boats in trouble. With the help of the GPS-technology the security forces would always be able to locate boats' position.

 

Canada. In the global free-market economy, private companies have fast smelled out how to turn "Big Brother"-type fishery monitoring into a profitable business. For example Archipelago Marine Research Ltd. of Victoria, BC offers equipment and software specialized for monitoring fishing activity at sea, as well as training, consulting, and data-review services.

 

Track abuse and violence at sea. According to Ian Urbina of New York Times, unnamed government officers suggest that to avoid the abuse or disappearance of seafarers, governments should impose more spot checks on ships returning to port and levy heavier penalties for incomplete crew lists. Ship-owners and crews must be required to report crimes at sea. Flag countries and their proxies should make public information on crimes by crew members and captains, and help to create and maintain an international database for tracking missing mariners.

 

E.U. European Union had introduced its own satellite-based vessel-

monitoring system (VMS), designed to continually inform the authorities on the

location, course and speed of vessels, and which became a standard

tool of fisheries monitoring and control worldwide. VMS is compulsory for all

the larger boats in EU's fleet. The E.U. Commission can see to it that its rules

are respected, while offering funding for Member States to acquire

state-of-the-art equipment and to train their people to use it. 

 

FAO. FAO is trying to co-ordinate international efforts, in Fisheries 

Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) with the aim of reducing

illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing activities. This, in FAO's

view is also important for a production growth and reduction of overcapacity

and of IUU fishing, through effective governance. It estimates that the total

IUU catch accounts for the major proportion of landings of some species.

 

It appears that fishing worldwide is going to be watched by a manifold Big Brother, and its sibling clones may keep multiplying. Rather inconvenient and unpleasant, but on the other side it may, just may, eventually help.

 

Vessel monitoring system (VMS)