KASAHARA: JAPANESE DISTANT-WATER FISHERIES 



Fishing in inshore waters was left largely to 

 miscellaneous fisheries, including primitive drag- 

 gers of various types. To a considerable degree, 

 this pattern has persisted to the present, ex- 

 cepting some major changes in the allocation of 

 fishing grounds in the northern North Pacific in- 

 cluding west Kamchatka, the Bering Sea, and the 

 Gulf of Alaska, as will be mentioned later. The 

 coastal trawl fishery, mainly by Danish seines 

 and partly by pair trawls, still remains the most 

 difficult one from the point of view of fishery 

 administration. Due to the long-established 

 vested interests of different groups of vessels 

 operating from different bases, the allocation of 

 fishing grounds is extremely complex, as illus- 

 trated in Figure 1. In addition, there are closed 

 areas around the home islands, some of which 

 are rather extensive, different closed seasons 

 applied in different areas, minimum depth limits 

 in some places, as well as restrictions on the 

 fishing bases each vessel can use for landing 

 her catches. 



Post- World War II Developments 



East China Sea traivl fishery. — Most of the 

 otter trawlers and many of the pair trawlers 

 were sunk by American submarines during the 

 war, in most cases while serving as military 

 transport vessels, and only eight otter trawlers 

 were left when the war was over. To meet the 

 serious shortage of food after the war, the gov- 

 ernment provided many incentives for recon- 

 structing and expanding the fishing industry. 

 The China Sea being the best trawl area in the 

 nearby waters, the fisheries there recovered very 

 quickly in spite of the so-called MacArthur Line 

 limiting their fishing grounds to a narrow area 

 of the continental shelf of the East China Sea. 

 Numerous violations occurred and the area was 

 later expanded slightly, but it was with the com- 

 ing into force of the peace treaty in 1952 that 

 the main fishing area became legally available 

 to the Japanese trawl fishery. 



By that time, however, 58 otter trawlers and 

 783 pair trawlers had been licensed, with the 

 total fishing power far exceeding that of the 

 prewar years. The catch per unit of effort, 

 which had shown a remarkable recovery during 

 the war time, started to decline sharply. Fur- 



FiGURE 1. — Allocation of coastal trawl fishing grounds 

 (from Norin Keizai Kenkyusho, 1965). Closed areas 

 are not shown in the figure. 



thermore, due to international disputes with 

 South Korea and mainland China, various re- 

 strictions were imposed on fishing operations. 

 The expansion of the fisheries of mainland China 

 (estimated to take roughly 70% of the total 

 groundfish catch from the East China Sea, in- 

 cluding the Yellow Sea) also affected the Jap- 

 anese catch. Increased fishing for China Sea 

 shrimp {Penaeus orientalis) improved the sit- 

 uation for a while, but the relative importance 

 of the East China Sea grounds decreased rapidly 

 as trawl fishing expanded into more distant 

 areas, particularly the Bering Sea. Many of the 

 otter-trawl licenses were used for obtaining new 

 licenses for distant-water fishing by larger ves- 

 sels, and there were only seven otter trawlers 

 operating in the East China Sea by 1969. The 

 number of pair trawlers also decreased, but to 

 a much lesser extent. The use of pair trawlers 

 as catchers of the Bering Sea mothership fish- 

 ery also contributed toward reducing fishing 

 pressure. Fishing in the South China Sea was 

 also resumed in 1952 but ceased almost com- 

 pletely as the main fishing area, the Gulf of 

 Tonkin, became unaccessible due to the Vietnam 

 War. 



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