Saury disappears from the sea in Japan !? What is it? September 25, 19:21
A record savage fishery continues, and the autumn taste saury lined up at a higher price than usual in the supermarket. At the “Sanma Festival”, the first thing was not in time, and the situation of using frozen fish continued. “Changes” are not limited to saury, but squid are also drastically decreasing in Hokkaido.
In fact, familiar seafood is disappearing from fishing grounds around Japan. One of the backgrounds is the rise in seawater temperature due to global warming. What is happening at sea?
The scream of a fisherman
A representative of autumn fish, saury will come from Hokkaido to Chiba from August when the water temperature near the sea surface is 10 to 15 degrees.
From this time, saury fishing has flourished in various places, but in the last few years, non-fishing has continued, and the fishermen have screamed.
In the middle of last month, in the port of Nemuro City, Hokkaido, there was an unusual situation where it was not possible to compete without catching saury. .
Autumn taste
Why can't I get saury?
One of the backgrounds is “rise in seawater temperature” and “movement of fishing grounds”.
Compared to 2009, when the fishery research and education organization did not fish, compared to 2009, when the fishery was abundant, the water temperature near the sea surface in the eastern part of Hokkaido, such as the coast of Kushiro City, rose to about 20 degrees in late August, and the fishing ground was 700 It was moving northeast about a kilometer.
Even off the coast of Sanriku, it moved about 300 kilometers to the east in mid-October.
On the 17th of this month, a saury fishing boat capsized over 600 kilometers east of Hokkaido, and in the accident where one of the crew members died and seven were missing, it was far away because they could not catch fish in the nearby seas. It means that we were fishing in the remote sea.
Is there any change in the season of saury?
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, in about 100 years until 2018, the sea surface temperature in the waters around Japan has risen by an average of about 1 degree per year.
This is higher than the world's average rising temperature. By sea area, it rises by 1.7 degrees in the central part of the Sea of Japan, and by about 1.2 degrees in the north of the East China Sea, Shikoku, and off the Tokai. According to the Fisheries Research and Education Organization, if the water temperature changes by about 1 degree, the fishery may move greatly depending on the fish.
In the future, as warming progresses, saury fishing grounds move away from the sea near Japan, and the peak of fishing occurs from early October to early November off the eastern coast of Hokkaido, and from mid-November to mid-December in the Sanriku region. It is expected to shift.
Regarding the impact on fisheries, Hideaki Kisho, Fisheries Research and Education Organization, said that the competition with foreign fishing boats and the decrease in the amount of resources were behind, “Fish has the characteristic of migrating at its preferred water temperature. And if the water temperature rises further, it will affect our food culture. "
It ’s not just saury.
Not just saury. Even the Japanese squid that Japanese have eaten for a long time is “abnormal”.
Hakodate City, Hokkaido, known as the “squid town”, boasting one of the largest landings in Japan. Since 2010, the amount of landing has been decreasing, and the handling amount of Toshino City has been the smallest since statistics started with 287 tons by the 20th of this month.
A fishery that can handle squid
According to Director Yasunori Sakurai of the Hakodate Cephalopod Science Research Center, which is familiar with the squid's ecology, the spawning of the squid spawning ground is actively performed in the Sea of Japan in October. It is that the condition of over 24 degrees that becomes difficult continues intermittently.
Director Sakurai says, “Fishes that can be taken and the seasons are changing. It is necessary to consider how fisheries can respond to the warming of the sea.”
Also in Fukui Prefecture, the catch of squid was from 2000 tons to 4000 tons a year until the 1990s, but in the 2000s, it reached the level of 1000 tons, and the catch of last year has decreased to 165 tons.
Fish! Where to go
The “fishing ground movement” has begun to occur in other fish.
Sawara, which has been regarded as a fish mainly in western Japan, has a tendency to increase its catch on the coasts of northern Japan such as Aomori Prefecture, and yellowtail that has been taken in Nagasaki and Shimane prefectures is becoming more common in Hokkaido.
In order to respond to changes in Hakodate City, the “squid town”, a system that subsidizes up to 10 million yen for local companies that are working on the development of new products and equipment that use seafood such as yellowtail other than squid Was established.
Local fisheries high schools are also working on the development of canned oiled yellowtails, and seasoned yellowtails are being offered in the morning market in front of Hakodate Station.
Impact report A warning for catching down and large-scale disasters
Under such circumstances, we have compiled a report with the United Nations IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
Impact of global warming changes that will reduce the amount of organisms in the world's oceans by up to 20% by the end of this century and reduce the number of fish that can be caught by up to 24% is.
In areas that depend on fisheries, they point out that they can trigger conflicts and conflicts over food.
Furthermore, because individual adaptation measures are fragmented and limited, we will promote the reduction of greenhouse gases around the world, sharing information on marine data and forecasts across countries and regions, and such know-how. It points out the need for assistance in areas where there is no.
The report also points out that the average sea level in the world could rise by more than 1 meter by the end of this century, as Greenland and Antarctic ice continue to melt.
According to the report, by around 2050, due to sea level rise, large-scale disasters that occur once every 100 years due to typhoon storm surges, etc. will occur every year in highly populated cities and island countries. Point out and play a warning bell.