KASAHARA: JAPANESE DISTANT-WATER PISHERIES 



vessels (for scouting and setting nets), the 

 amount of canned crab produced, and the amount 

 of tangle nets used. This form of operation con- 

 tinued until 1959 without a major expansion, 

 except for a substantial increase in the produc- 

 tion quota in 1959. A second mothership fleet 

 was authorized to operate in the Bering Sea in 

 1960 to produce frozen crab. The fishery there- 

 after grew very rapidly until 1964, when a rec- 

 ord catch of over 10 million crab was made. 



Having declared exclusive rights to exploit 

 king crab resources under the 1958 continental 

 shelf convention (entered into force in 1964), 

 the United States initiated, in 1964, negotiations 

 with Japan concerning the crab fishery in the 

 eastern Bering Sea. Since then, the Japanese 

 catch has been reduced continuously under in- 

 ternational agreements between the two gov- 

 ernments. 



The first Soviet mothership crab fleet entered 

 the eastern Bering Sea in 1960, resulting in di- 

 rect competition with the Japanese fishery. The 

 U.S. crab fishery in the Bering Sea remained of 

 minor importance through 1963, with no fishing 

 conducted in some years. U.S. vessels from 

 Kodiak and adjacent areas moved into the Ber- 

 ing Sea in 1964 and their catch has been in- 

 creasing since then. Traditionally, Japanese 

 fishing was by tangle nets and U.S. fishing in 

 waters south of the Peninsula was by pots (some 

 U.S. vessels used to trawl for crab in the Bering 

 Sea). Now pot fishing is conducted both by 

 the Japanese and the Americans, complicating 

 the situation further. The Japanese and the 

 Soviets have also developed a system of allocat- 

 ing tangle-net fishing grounds between their 

 fleets. As the eastern Bering Sea king crab 

 stock began to show signs of depletion, Japan 

 intensified fishing for tanner crab, which is also 

 very abundant in the eastern Bering Sea, Tan- 

 ner crab fishing is now as important as king 

 crab fishing and, through a quota, under control 

 by the Japan-United States agreement. 



The Japanese mothership crab fishery in 

 waters oflf the west coast of Kamchatka (the 

 most important king crab fishing area) was re- 

 sumed in 1955, before the conclusion of the 

 Japan-Soviet fishery treaty, and became subject 

 to the provisions of the treaty in 1957, which 



covered two species of king crab, P. camtschatica 

 and P. platypus. The regulations under the 

 treaty were applied to both the Japanese and 

 Soviet mothership fleets, with Japanese share 

 decreasing since 1965. As a party to the 1958 

 continental shelf convention, the Soviet govern- 

 ment declared, in 1968, its exclusive rights to 

 natural resources of the continental shelf ad- 

 jacent to its territory. Although Japan was 

 not a member of the convention, she agreed, in 

 1969, to negotiate a separate arrangement for 

 crab fishing, which resulted in a 1-year agree- 

 ment specifying the catch limits of diff"erent 

 species of crabs for the Japanese fisheries in 

 designated areas, as well as the number of moth- 

 erships or fishing vessels to be used for crab 

 fishing. Thus, not only crab fishing on the west 

 coast of Kamchatka for king crabs but also tan- 

 ner crab fishing in the western Bering Sea, as 

 well as fishing for a variety of crabs in waters 

 off" the southern Kuriles and Sakhalin became 

 subject to regulation. The agreement has since 

 been revised year after year. The complex legal 

 arrangements for crab fishing in the northern 

 North Pacific will later be reviewed in some 

 detail. 



TUNA FISHERIES 



Japan had a tuna fishing fleet consisting of 

 about 2,000 vessels before the war, but they were 

 largely small boats operating in waters not too 

 far from the home islands. Pole-and-line skip- 

 jack fishing was much more important than long- 

 line tuna fishing, with the bulk of the vessels 

 carrying out both.'" Skipjack fishing was also 

 conducted from various bases in the present 

 Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Although 

 tuna are caught by other types of gear, partic- 

 ularly purse seine (also by traps in small quan- 

 tities), the Japanese tuna industry consists 

 largely of the longline tuna fishery and the pole- 

 and-line skipjack fishery, the latter taking a sub- 



'" A complete account of the Japanese tuna industry 

 up to about 1962 is given in Masuda (1963, in Japanese). 

 In the Japanese language, skipjack ("katsuo") is dis- 

 tinguished from larger tunas ("maguro"). Substan- 

 tial quantities of billfishes and swordfish are also caught 

 by tuna longline; they are generally called "kajiki." 



241 



