KASAHARA: JAPANESE DISTANT-WATER FISHERIES 



Various measures were taken, including the 

 combining of gross tonnages of smaller vessels 

 to license a larger vessel, tighter control on il- 

 legal trawlers, compensations for giving up trawl 

 fishing, and preferential licensing for transfer 

 to other fisheries which were still in the process 

 of expansion. During 1953-54, 285 licenses were 

 transferred to other fisheries with compensa- 

 tions, a substantial number entering the tuna 

 longline fishery. During 1954-56, when the 

 salmon mothership fishery was still expanding 

 rapidly, a large number of trawlers were con- 

 verted into salmon catchers. Thus, a total of 

 910 licenses were taken out of the coast trawl 

 fishery during 1953-56, with a total gross ton- 

 nage of 225,500 tons' (Norin Keizai Kenkyusho, 

 1965). 



The most effective measure taken to reduce 

 vessels operating in coastal waters, however, has 

 been the expansion of trawl fishing grounds, 

 which began in 1954. Danish trawling was ex- 

 panded successfully into waters around the 

 southern Kuriles, oflfshore banks in the Japan 

 Sea, waters along Sakhalin and the Japan Sea 

 coast of the Soviet Union, and, finally, waters 

 around the northernmost part of the Kurile chain 

 and both coasts of Kamchatka. Expansion into 

 the northern Kuriles and Kamchatka waters 

 marked a new era for Japanese land-based trawl 

 fishing. By then, the Bering Sea trawl fishery, 

 both by mothership fleets and large independent 

 otter trawlers, was in full blast, and the mother- 

 ship trawl fishery in waters off west Kamchatka 

 had also started. A separate set of regulations, 

 therefore, was established for fishing by trawl 

 vessels licensed under the category of the coastal 

 trawl fishery (see footnote 6) . Great operation- 

 al difl^culties were encountered by the vessels en- 

 gaged in fishing in these areas during the initial 

 period, for they were largely from the existing 

 fleet of coastal Danish seiners. Priorities for 

 licensing were given to those having vested in- 

 terests in waters around Hokkaido. Fishing 

 area was originally defined as north of lat 48°N, 



^ The following numbers of trawl licenses were trans- 

 ferred to other fisheries, either converting vessels or 

 giving up licenses in return for constructing new boats : 

 888 to the mothership salmon fishery as catchers, 102 to 

 the tuna longline fishery, and 14 to the purse-seine 

 fishery. 



east of long 148°E, and west of long 170°E, but 

 was later expanded eastward to long 170 °W 

 with the western boundary moved to long 153°E. 

 The fishery has grown very rapidly since 1963, 

 and the present fleet consists of nearly 200 ves- 

 sels (now called "Hokutensen," meaning vessels 

 transferred to the north), most of them newly 

 built stern trawlers (the upper limit of their 

 size is set at 350 gross tons). The total catch 

 of the fleet is nearly comparable to that of the 

 entire mothership trawl fishery in the Bering 

 Sea. The main fishing grounds are still in west 

 Kamchatka and the northern Kuriles, but the 

 amount of fish taken from east Kamchatka and 

 the Bering Sea is also considerable. Out of the 

 total catch of 768,000 metric tons in 1969, 

 670,000 tons were Pacific pollack {Theragra 

 chalco gramma) . 



A second government plan to further reduce 

 trawl fishing in coastal waters (the third in the 

 history of Japanese fishery administration) 

 started in 1962, again through the transfer of 

 licenses to other fisheries. By that time, how- 

 ever, most of the other fisheries had reached or 

 were reaching a point of saturation, and the ef- 

 fects of this plan were not too great. Some 30 

 licenses were transferred to the tuna and skip- 

 jack fisheries; a few licenses were issued for 

 trawling in West Africa at the expense of those 

 for coastal trawling. 



Some remarks may be appropriate for the 

 handling of the inshore trawl fishery. Emphasis 

 of the fishery administration was on reducing 

 the number of vessels through compensations 

 and subsidies. Over 30,000 vessels existed in 

 1950, of which only 7,000 carried licenses issued 

 by prefectural governments, the remainder be- 

 ing illegal vessels. The central government 

 established policies and guidelines for the hand- 

 ling of this fishery, which included the definition 

 of inshore draggers (called small bottom drag- 

 gers) as vessels of less than 15 gross tons each; 

 the establishment of nationwide limits on the 

 total number, the combined gross tonnage, and 

 the aggregate horsepower; the establishment of 

 a target for reduction, etc. During the period 

 1956-61, a total of 2,342 vessels were scrapped 

 to be used for "tsukiiso" (objects sunk in shallow 

 waters to attract fish), 2,379 diverted to other 



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