the so-called Nojimasaki fishing grounds for albacore in the central Pacific were developed. At 

 about the same period fishing vessels from prefectures in western Japan such as Kagoshima, 

 Kochi, Wakayama, and Mie, led by their prefectural research and exploratory fishing vessels, 

 began to fish in the distant South China Sea, Sulu Sea, and Celebes Sea. After 19 36 it gradually 

 became clear that the waters of the former Japanese mandated South Sea islands were excellent 

 yellowfin fishing grounds and large boats based at the port of Misaki in Kanagawa Prefecture 

 began to compete with each other in fishing that region. This condition continued up to the be- 

 ginning of the war, with the Misaki fleet fishing tuna grounds within an operating radius of about 

 2, 000 miles. 



There was also a large number of fishing boats based in Formosa and in the South Sea 

 islands. Those based in Formosa numbered 700 vessels, with a total tonnage of 6, 000 tons, and 

 they fished grounds in the waters east of Fornnosa, in the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea, the 

 Celebes Sea, and the East Philippine Sea, their operating radius extending about 1,000 miles from 

 the port of Takao. 



The above figures give the operating radius for single vessel operations, but in 

 mothership-type tuna fishing carried on experimentally from Takao before the war the range was 

 further extended to take in the Banda, Flores, and Timor seas, and the Indian Ocean coast of 

 the Greater and Lesser Sunda archipelagos. 



The foregoing are the ranges within which commercial vessels actually fished, but 

 many resecirch vessels and the training ships of the Fisheries Institute surveyed in addition to 

 the areas mentioned above the coastal waters of New Guinea axid the Solomons to the south, the 

 coastal waters of Sumatra, the Andaman, and Nicobar islands to the west, and even went as far as 

 the Maldive Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Thus the waters in which Japanese 

 actually set their tuna longlines in one way or another cover an extremely broad area from 70 E. 

 longitude to 165° W. longitude and from 15 S. latitude to 45 N. latitude. If to this we add the 

 waters fished by Japanese emigrants in Hawaii and California, it is probably no exaggeration to 

 say that all of the warm seas from the central Indian Ocean east across the whole Pacific have 

 been developed by Japanese or by Americeins of Japanese origin. There is probably room for 

 reconsideration and reason for criticism concerning the question of whether or not the nneasures, 

 methods, and spirit with which this development was undertaken were all that they might have 

 been, but leaving aside that problenn, development of these fishing grounds can be expected to 

 make no small contribution to the prosperity of the human race in the future. From this point of 

 view it is truly a great accomplishment which deserves to be writ large on the pages of the 

 world's fisheries history. 



As was stated earlier, the tuna longline fishery made a great revolutionary step 

 forward through the application of internal combustion engines to fishing boats. The adoption of 

 the line-hauler, too, was another extremely significant force for the development of this fishery. 



It is recorded that the line-hauler was imported from England and first came into 

 use in 1911. The length of the main line of one skate of gear is about 300 meters. As from 

 several score to 300 to 350 skates may be used at one time, it would be absolutely impossible to 

 raise the gear in a short time by the use of manpower. The adoption of the line-hauler can be 

 said to have supplied the solution to this problem of time and labor. In other words the utili- 

 zation of the internal combustion engine increased the operating radius of the fishing boat and the 

 adoption of the line-hauler renaarkably innproved the efficiency of the work. 



Thus the utilization of machine power was a force which operated for the rapid 

 development of this fishery, jind the progress of that development in terms of catch is shown by 

 the following table. 



15 



