FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 2 



396,000 tons. The pollack catch is still increas- 

 ing; several 5,000-ton class vessels, newly built, 

 are coming into operation. The recovery rate 

 of minced meat from pollack is relatively small, 

 probably between 20 and 25^c , and the remaind- 

 er goes to fish meal and oil. But the price of 

 pollack surimi, used for making fish cakes 

 ("kamaboko," "chikuwa") and other products, 

 is so high that it makes all the diflference in the 

 profitability of the trawl fisheries in the northern 

 areas. The price of fish meal is also high, around 

 $200 per ton. Although imports of fish meal are 

 scheduled to be liberalized this year, a high im- 

 port duty will be levied when imports exceed 

 a certain quantity still to be fixed. 



Search for new distant-water fishing grounds 

 continues, and there have been some develop- 

 ments in this area, such as deepwater trawling 

 around the mid-Pacific islands, squid fishing off 

 the Atlantic coast of the United States, trawling 

 in the Gulf of Aden for sea breams and cuttle- 

 fish, or fishing for barracouta (Leiomira) off 

 New Zealand. Although further effort will be 

 made in this direction, most of the abundant re- 

 sources of traditional species are likely to be in 

 areas relatively close to the coasts of foreign 

 countries. Thus, uncertainties about the future 

 regimes for fisheries are a discouraging factor. 

 Trawling in waters deeper than 500 m, expan- 

 sion of skipjack fishing, particularly in the trop- 

 ical Pacific, and the development of cephalopod 

 resources in various parts of the world, are good 

 possibilities. In general, however, prospects for 

 further expansion of Japanese distant-waters 

 fisheries to harvest conventional species by 

 known methods do not appear bright. 



Aquaculture. — As shown in Figure 16, the 

 yield of marine aquaculture has been increasing 

 steadily. Since aquaculture includes a variety 

 of things, we must examine a breakdown of the 

 total yield, which is shown in Table 7. Out of 

 the total of 473,000 metric tons produced by 

 marine aquaculture in 1969, 245,000 tons were 

 oysters ivith shell. The equivalent figure for 

 oyster meat is estimated at 37,000 tons. Next 

 comes laver ("nori," PorpMjra) at 134,000 tons; 

 "wakame" (also seaweed, Undaria) accounts for 

 60,000 tons; the remainder, 34,000 tons, consists 



Table 7. — Aquaculture production, excluding pearl cul- 

 ture, in 1969. 



Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Japan) (1971). 



of cultured fishes and various invertebrates. 

 Thus, in terms of animal protein products, 37,000 

 tons of oyster meat and 34,000 tons of fish and 

 other animals are all that is produced by marine 

 aquaculture, Aquaculture for oysters and laver 

 can still be expanded. It is facing, however, 

 mounting problems arising from the industrial- 

 ization of the coastal zone, particularly pollution 

 and land reclamation. The main fish species for 

 marine aquaculture in Japan is yellowtail 

 (Seriola) , others being quite insignificant in 

 quantity. Shrimp culture in Japan is advertised 

 all over the world, but actual production in 1969 

 was only 300 tons. 



Freshwater aquaculture produces a substan- 

 tial amount of fish: 23,000 tons of eels, 14,000 

 tons of carp, and 10,000 tons of trouts in 1969. 

 The yields of these species have increased very 

 substantially in the last 10 years, but the total 

 production of freshwater fish culture is still a 

 little over 50,000 tons. All aquaculture for 

 fishes and crustaceans, in both seawater and 

 fresh water, is carried out by intensive feeding. 

 In most cases, fishes (largely coastal pelagic spe- 

 cies) and fish meal are the main animal protein 

 components of feeds. On a round-weight basis, 

 the amount of feed fish required for yellowtail 

 and eel culture is perhaps 7 to 8 times the amount 



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