Being an island nation Japan for thousands of years has enjoyed the sea as its cultural and economic resource. Fishing has been one of Japan’s largest coastal industry and has supported a huge number of the population. The industry has been a sour...Read More
~Posted on
Jan 2019
Being an island nation Japan
for thousands of years has enjoyed the sea as its cultural and economic
resource. Fishing has been one of Japan’s largest coastal industry and has
supported a huge number of the population. The industry has been a source of
various marine products to the restaurants and supermarket locally and
worldwide. Among these products are sharks, seaweed, squid, tuna, and oyster.
The industry fishermen, delivery people, packagers, traders, butchers, air
shipping companies, trucking companies and the customers. The delivery process
of the fish passes through a dozen of hands and with every exchange the price
of the fish goes higher. This is because every business the product goes
through, has to earn some profit hence at the end of the exchange the final
consumer ends up paying expensively (Hays, n.d.).
Like every other industry,
the fishing industry has various challenges. Among the many problems that the
Japanese fisheries sector experience natural disaster is the main issue. The
fishing industry suffered a significant blow with the earthquake and tsunami
that hit the country in March 2011 (Haw & Sullivan, 2013). Fishing villages
on the coast of the northeast area were destroyed leading to a 90% destruction
of the fishing industry
The industry has also been
affected by climate change. Although over-fishing has contributed to low count
of fish in the sea, climate change has also contributed a great length to this.
The climate change is the global warming which has resulted in increasing in
atmospheric temperature and therefore, ice no longer forms in the ocean hence there
are no breeding sites for the marine life (Haw & Sullivan, 2013).
The government has been able to put in place regulation although
not so tight to curb these and many other challenges that the industry
experience. It has done this successfully and has been able to manage several
localized fisheries through Fishery Cooperation Association (FCA) (Haw &
Sullivan, 2013). The industry therefore is on the right track of recovery.