The future of Japanese fishing

by Jon Bowermaster on

Given the hammering Japan’s fishing towns took thanks to the earthquake/tsunami and the continued leaking of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant it is legitimate to question the future of fish in the region.

Just like the fishermen in the Gulf after the BP spill, seafood providers across Japan are concerned about an inevitable public relations fall out even if its fish stays available and safe, i.e. non-radioactive.

While the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, the world’s biggest — selling more than 400 species of fish six days a week, a $5.5 billion a year business providing 40 million Japanese fish-lovers – has not yet backed off selling anything, buyers have fallen off due to a lack of fish.

The most immediate concern is that so many of the small towns in the north – and their boats, docks, jetties, nets, tackle and fishermen – are gone. Fish farms and onshore processing plants have been wiped out, hundreds of thousands of wild fish washed onto shore, dead. As a result, scallops, sardines, oysters, seaweed, bonito and even shark’s fin have largely disappeared from Tsukiji in the past week.

The normally packed aisles of the sprawling market – the equivalent of 200 football fields under one roof — are quiet. “We’re not selling anything because there are no customers,” one wholesaler at the market reported. Sales to restaurants have fallen off too.” Sushi restaurants near the market are suffering too, in part due to the lack of tourists.Tsukiji’s general manager, Tsutomu Kosaka, told the New York Times, “It’s not like the brand is just damaged now – it’s over. At least for now, the brand is finished. Gone. It’s hopeless.”

The early consensus based on what’s happened so far at the struggling nuclear plant is that fish pulled from the sea off Japan should be safe, given that winds and currents will disperse any potentially dangerous particles before they can pollute. But Japan’s seafood export business – $2.4 billion last year – will definitely take a hit.

South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Singapore and the Philippines announced more intense screening of seafood from Japan. Many restaurants across Asia have stopped buying seafood from Japan. “Until the situation stabilizes in the country, it seems unlikely that guests will feel comfortable consuming Japanese products,” said the manager of the Hong-Kong-based Mandarin Oriental International hotels. The Four Season Hotel’s, also Hong Kong-based, has suspended import of all Japanese food, including scallops and abalone, buying instead from New Zealand and Australia, Scotland and Indonesia.

While dairy products (milk and eggs), grains, vegetables and meat might be susceptible to radioactivity exposure experts suggest that the impact on fish will be “negligible.”

Far from Japan, in Mumbai, caution was being taken. “You don’t know which fish is contaminated and which one is not. So the precautionary principle is to ban all fish coming from there,” said one nuclear expert.

The reality is that relatively little Japanese seafood makes it to the U.S.; your corner sushi restaurant is more likely to get its fish from China, Chile or Thailand. Most imports were stopped before the nuclear plants started leaking. Still the FDA said it may “increase and target product sampling” of goods from Japan for contamination.

One market that will most likely grow? Export of seafood from the U.S. to Japan, currently a $750 million a year industry. The 127 million Japanese depend on seafood as a staple, consuming twenty percent of the world’s seafood. But for the moment almost all exporting to Japan is on hold as the country rebuilds its infrastructure; simply delivering goods to many corners of the country has stopped.

But the short-term future of Japan’s fisheries may be most affected by perception rather than reality. The market for Gulf seafood is way off, nearly one year after the BP spill. Given the massive destruction along Japan’s coastline, the impact on its fishing grounds – and fish — could be felt far longer.

The effect of Japan’s tsunami on whaling

by Jon Bowermaster on

In an ironic twist of fate, Japan’s recent tsunami may have accomplished something conservationists have been fervently attempting for years: Driving a final nail into its pro-active whaling communities.

The first outsiders only recently reached the small town of Ayukawahama, which was crushed by thirty-foot waves. So was the headquarters of the biggest business in town, Ayukawa Whaling, one of the country’s most prodigious hunters of big whales.

The waves rushed six hundred feet inland, wiping out 80 percent of the town’s 700 homes. Four hundred of its 1,400 residents are missing, assumed dead. The peninsula town is described as having been reduced to “an expanse of splintered wood and twisted cars.”

In these days two weeks after the natural disaster the impact on the whaling town carries a kind of finality. Ayukawa lives off whaling. It is one of just four communities in Japan home to small fleets that twice a year hunt whales in waters close to Japan, differentiating them from the fleet that heads to the Southern Ocean each November.

“There is no Ayukawa without whaling,” said a 27-year-old whaler.The four boats of Ayukawa Whaling were sucked out to sea by the retreating tsunami waves, thrown back onto shore a mile down the coastline. The company’s 28 employees ran for the hills. All survived but have now been laid off.

The company’s chairman told the New York Times that while he hoped to rebuild the factory, refloat the company’s boats and get back to hunting whales, he admitted it wouldn’t be any time soon. It will take months and lots of money to pull his boats back onto the sea; his processing plant for whale meat was reduced to splinters.

Nearby the daughter of a 54-year-old woman scavenging for food found a tin of whale meat among the debris. “I wish we could eat whale meat every day,” said the 17-year-old. “But the whalers are so old, I think they’ll just quit or retire after what has happened.

“I think whaling is dead here.”

During the height of the Southern Ocean campaign which usually runs from November to March, many news stories can make it seem like whale hunting – and whale meat eating — is a passion for all Japanese. The reality is that Japan does not thrive on whale meat and there are increasingly fewer companies engaged in whale hunting.

Despite the success of the Sea Shepherd’s this past season – its successful harassment forcing the Japanese to end its season early and reducing its take by some 75 percent, to less than 200 whales – the tsunami waves may ultimately get credit for stopping the hunt.

If you follow the exploits of Sea Shepherd and its outspoken leader, Captain Paul Watson, you’d think they might be celebrating aboard its mother ship, the “Steve Irwin.” But Watson’s public reaction has been appropriately muted:

“Nature does not play favorites and just as the earthquake struck New Zealand recently, the fires ravaged Australia two years ago, and the tsunami struck India and Thailand not so very long ago, the message is clear — we all share the dangers of living on the water planet called earth,” he wrote.

“In the face of such peril from the forces of nature, we are all equal.

I have heard many people say that Japan’s tragedy is karma. People who say such things do not understand the concept of karma. This earthquake struck Japan purely on the basis of geography and geology.”

In another twist, the Japanese factory processing ship “Nisshin Maru,” which the Shepherd’s had hounded back to port a month early, is being used by the Japanese government to deliver aid supplies (charcoal, 100,000 noodle cups, kerosene, cranes) to the hard-hit north.

“Sea Shepherd believes that the ‘Nisshin Maru’ should be permanently converted into a humanitarian aid vessel,” suggested its website.

But the Japanese have rebuilt from the dust before and started over, with great success. One Ayukawa whaler was quoted two days after the tsunami: “As long as there are people who will carry on whaling in the absence of vessels or facilities, whaling could be revived … eventually.”

Post-quake life in Tokyo

by Matthew Firestone on

As a Tokyo-based writer, I’ve written no less than four books on Japan in addition to countless blogs, newspaper articles, magazine features and reference texts. While I hesitate to use the word expert, I consider myself to be profoundly knowledgeable about the country that I’ve lived in for the last five years.

Yet despite these credentials, I have struggled for weeks to summarize any clear thoughts about the recent Great Tohoku Earthquake. Even as I finally sit down now and haphazardly hack away at my keyboard, what follows is little more than a scattered and solitary perspective on post-quake life in Tokyo…

With that said, I do hope that my brief narrative offers some perspective on the present mood here, albeit through the eyes of a resident foreigner. I’ve also made a conscientious effort to remain objective in the hopes of cutting through all the fears, paranoia and criticisms that reside in the media as of late.I guess I should start by saying that Tokyo is quite literally running at half-power.

Rolling blackouts have been implemented in order to conserve power for the whole of eastern Japan. In a city defined by its 24/7 lights, the lack of flashing billboards and neon signs has left the streets feeling rather gloomy. Stores are also powering down, with high-consumption devices such as freezers and display cases left unplugged.

In terms of food, Tokyoites are most definitely not starving. But we’re not exactly living the culinary high-life either. In my neighborhood, about half the restaurants and bars are still shuttered. Milk and frozen products are absent, and toilet paper and bottled water are very limited, but most everything else is still available in one place or another.

A brief note on contamination: We have been advised to steer clear of any produce, dairy and seafood from Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures. Supplies from western Japan are in fact reaching Tokyo, but shortages of specific items vary from day to day. Again however, contrary to some news reports, there is still abundant food in Tokyo.

Moving on, transportation remains severely impacted by the quake.

Inside the Yamanote line, which circles central Tokyo, the situation is surprisingly normal. Most subway and elevated lines are running without interruption. As you move into the suburbs however, the situation becomes much more complicated. Periphery lines are subject to delays and even closures depending on the time of day.

The country’s famed shinkansen or bullet trains are also rather uncharacteristically off-schedule. Aftershocks are still rattling the northeast, keeping the Akita, Aomori and Tohoku lines at a standstill. On the contrary, eastward lines to Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe are all on schedule, which has fueled a mass exodus to western Honshu and Kyushu.

The subject of whether or not one should leave Tokyo – or Japan entirely – is probably the most frequent subject brought up within the resident ex-pat community. Much printed and online debate has centered around this issue, but I personally do not feel that there is a definitive right or wrong answer.

For those with young children, the decision to leave is an easy one. The same goes for high-ranking business executives and government personnel that can quickly uproot and recommence their work elsewhere. Everybody else – including myself – are monitoring the news daily and assessing any and all viable options.

For contracted English teachers who may have only planned to stay in Japan for the short-term, the decision to leave is again an easy one. But for other foreigners with more permanent jobs and/or Japanese spouses, leaving everything behind presents a far more difficult challenge.

(For the record, I count myself to be in the latter group).

Media coverage of the event has been extensive, but there remain marked differences between the stories told by domestic and foreign news organizations. I’d argue that the truth lies somewhere between both extremes, though it is probably impossible for the general public to really know what’s going on right now.

The Japanese coverage has sought to minimize fear, albeit at the expense of complete transparency. Foreign coverage has at times been sensationalist, but solid investigative reporting has uncovered some surprising kernels of truth. Criticism of the TEPCO power company and the Japanese government has been widespread here and abroad.

At this point, reconstruction efforts are already underway, even though it will still be many more months before the situation at Fukushima stabilizes. And there is much truth to the oft-cited ‘Japanese spirit’ that has united a nation in the face of horrific tragedy. The economy will also rebound, but lost lives and property can never be replaced.

To end on a personal note, I will be indefinitely suspending my ‘Big in Japan’ column here at Gadling. Although I have immensely enjoyed covering weird and wonderful Japan, at this time I don’t feel that it’s all-together appropriate. In the future, when wounds inevitably heal, I look forward to again writing about the country I love.

However, I still remain committed to covering the wider world of travel, so please do continue to stop by Gadling and check out my articles. I have just returned from a trip through Chiapas and Oaxaca, and will soon be kicking off a mini-series on the *other* Mexico. Stay tuned.

And finally, thanks for reading my thoughts on a deeply sensitive issue, and I do hope that I have been able to present an accurate assessment of post-quake life in Tokyo. For those of you presently residing in Tokyo, please feel free to chime in and share your experiences and thoughts in a constructive manner.

Hawaii travel still suffering

by Chris Owen on

While it may indeed be safe traveling to Hawaii, not as many people are, at least from Japan. Last month’s earthquake in Japan turned tsunami that damaged or destroyed shops and attractions in Hawaii has taken it’s toll on tourism.

Before the disaster hit, tourism numbers were up with February spending clocked at $1.013 billion, an increase of 18.7 percent over the previous year. Airline seats sold to Hawaii from Japan were on the rise too, up 2.4 percent.

Now, the number of Japanese visitors to the Aloha State has fallen 25 percent since the March 11 quake, compared with a year ago, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority reports the Wall Street Journal. Hotels are reporting cancellations of future bookings as high as 45 percent too.
The tsunami that struck the Big Island of Hawaii spared lives and no serious injuries or deaths were reported but caused an estimated $30 million in damages. Big players in the Hawaii hotel business the Four Seasons and Kona Village Resort both closed. The Four Seasons is scheduled to open at the end of the month. Kona Village still has not set a reopening date.

The Japanese, a critical ingredient in Hawaii’s tourism success story, typically do not go far from home during a crisis and the crisis in Japan is far from over. Hawaii tourism officials are hesitant to predict when it will be business-as-usual again.

“This is more than dollars and cents, it’s a relationship we have with them,” Mike McCartney, CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority told the Wall Street Journal. To help tourism, the Hawaii Tourism Authority has authorized $3 million in emergency funds for pitching Hawaii to markets other than Japan.

That might be working too. Today, the Hawaii Tourism Authority revised it’s projections to reflect an 18 percent decline in arrivals from Japan for the month of March, less than the authority’s initial 25 percent estimate.

But while tourism may be down, low air price to Hawaii have fueled higher prices at hotels.

HawaiiFreePress.com tracks price increases and reports a 25 percent hike in hotel prices. “Everyone’s favorite island getaway, Hawaii, jumps one spot to the top of the list this month. Leisure travelers are taking advantage of recent airfare sales to Honolulu, driving hotel demand and increasing rates.” but concludes “The good news is that lying on the beach and swimming in the warm Pacific Ocean are still free!”

Flickr photo by Madmarv00

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Video: Japanese tsunami destroying everything in its path

by Scott Carmichael on

The aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has been widely broadcast on TV news shows – images of wiped out towns and the total destruction of entire areas showed us the power of the quake and its resulting tsunami.

In this video, you’ll see one of the most terrifying clips to date – showing just how devastating this natural disaster really was. From the slowly rising river waters to a massive torrent that destroyed everything in its path – this is one clip that will stay in your mind for a long time.

[Via: Jalopnik]