overfishing, lu October 1992, eight members of the 

 Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) known as the "Nauru 

 Group" (Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, 

 Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, 

 Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu) concluded an agreement 

 which places a limit on the number of distant-water 

 purse seine vessels fishing in the central and western 

 Pacific. The vessels in this fishery mainly target 

 skipjack and yellowfin tuna and account for most of the 

 catch in the south Pacific region. The signatories 

 justified the need for a limit by noting the rapid 

 capitalization of this fishery and its possible detrimental 

 effect on tuna stocks. '^ With access to central western 

 Pacific fisheries becoming increasingly problematic, it 

 is reasonable to assume that future Japanese distant- 

 water purse seine effort will be increasingly devoted to 

 Indian Ocean grounds. 



1. Bluefin Tuna 



Bluefin tuna is an important fisheries resource 

 whose supply has been increasingly secured through 

 distant-water fisheries. It is the most valuable tuna 

 species on the lucrative Japanese .sashimi market. 

 There are three primary distant-water fishing grounds 

 for this resource: the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean, the 

 South Pacific, and the South Indian Ocean. 

 Overfishing of bluefin tuna by global tuna fleets in the 

 Atlantic Ocean led to the fomiation of the International 

 Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas 

 (ICC AT) which strictly limits the catch of the depleted 

 Atlantic hluefiii tuna resource. 



Until 1993, catch of the South Pacific resource, 

 known as southern bluefin tuna (SBT), was allocated 

 among the three main participants in this fishery 

 (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) under a series of 

 infonnal annual meetings. A fonnal convention for the 

 conservation of the SBT resource was established in 

 May 1993 to rebuild this depleted resource. The 

 Japanese SBT fieet fishes in 7 main fishing grounds 

 (appendix Y). 



With access to tuna resources gradually becoming 

 more difficult to secure, Japan has come to rely more 

 and more on tuna imports. The rapid appreciation of 

 the yen during the late 1980s and early 1990s has 

 accelerated this trend. The distant-water tuna fleets of 

 Taiwan, the ROK, China, Indonesia, and the so-called 

 flag-of-convenience fleets (e.g. Honduras, Panama) are 

 engaged in fierce competition for tuna exports to the 



lucrative Japanese market (see Section V. Fishing 

 Vessel Exports for furtlier discussion of this issue). 



2. Labor Problems 



Two problems facing the entire Japanese distant- 

 water fishing fleet are especially acute for the distant- 

 water tuna fleet. They are: 1) a shortage of fisheries 

 labor, and 2) the aging of the fisheries work force. 

 Japanese youth are not attracted to work perceived to 

 be kiken (dangerous), kitsui (hard), and kitanai (dirty). 

 The result is a workforce which is smaller in number 

 and older in age (appendix Z). 



One obvious solution to this problem, particularly 

 for the distant-water tuna fleet, is hiring foreign labor 

 from developing countries. In 1992, Japan's distant- 

 water longliners employed 1,586 foreign laborers, 

 distant-water pole-and-liners employed 101 foreign 

 workers, and distant-water purse seiners employed 39 

 foreigners, bringing the total to nearly 2,000 workers. 

 By country, these workers came from Indonesia 

 (1,387), the Philippines (361), Peru (284), Kiribati 

 (101), South Africa (44), Micronesia (30), Burma (5), 

 Fiji (2), and Panama (1)."* 



Tlie Japanese fisheries industry is attempfing to 

 reduce the need for domestic labor by automating 

 fishing operations as much as possible (e.g. moving 

 from two-vessel to one-vessel purse seine operations). 

 Automation is expensive, however, so many vessel 

 owners have gone into considerable debt to finance 

 these improvements. 



[I. Government Promotion of Shipbuilding 



The Japanese Government has five long-tenn, low- 

 interest loan programs for the construction of new 

 fishing vessels. " Two of these programs are for small 

 fishing vessels having less than I lOGRT and will not 

 be described here. Details of the three programs 

 promoting the construction of fishing vessels over 1 10 

 GRT are as follows: 



The first program is called "Restructuring of 

 Fisheries Corporate Management," and is administered 

 by the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Finance 

 Corporation. The program was established by the 

 Fisheries Restructuring Special Measure Law of 1976 



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