Fishing about and about fishing
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
FISHERIES MANAGEMENT – THE JAPANESE WAY
FISHERIES MANAGEMENT – THE JAPANESE WAY
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