Horsehair crab fishing began in the Sea of Okhotsk off the coast of Monbetsu City, Hokkaido, where the drift ice was far away, and lively crabs were landed one after another.
On the 17th, six fishing boats of the Monbetsu Fisheries Cooperative, which had finished fishing offshore, returned to the harbor around noon and landed horsehair crabs one after another for the first time.
At this time, many horsehair crabs caught in the Sea of Okhotsk store nutrients in the cold sea under the drift ice, and are tight and tasty, so on the 17th, many of them have a shell width of about 9 cm. It was landed.
In recent years, the permissible catch of horsehair crab in the Okhotsk region has been lowered to a record low of 150 tons per year from last year due to a serious resource depletion.
The amount of the first landing on the 17th was about 110 kg, which was about a quarter of last year, but the price was 4000 to 6000 yen per kg, which was about the same as the average year.
Kotaro Fujita of the Monbetsu Fisheries Cooperative said, "I couldn't put the crab basket as I expected because there was still drift ice left off the coast, so the amount of landing is small, but I'm looking forward to it in the future."
Horsehair crab fishing off the coast of Monbetsu continues until around August.