Japan Weakening In Fishing Fight

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31586, 25 January 1968, Page 6

Japan Weakening In Fishing Fight

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) Japan is weakening in its fight against the 12-mile fishing zone which most countries have now declared round their shores.

The world’s greatest fishing nation, Japan is the last defender of the three-mile territorial limit, of which the stauchest supporters are the big Japanese catching companies ranging the high seas from the Arctic to the Antarctic. To take a new look at its country’s position concerning fishing limits, Japan's Fish-

;cries Association has set up two committees, one of local fishermen and the other of deep sea operators. Earlier this year, Japanese members of Parliament were vehement in their calls for a 12-mile zone to protect the interests of coastal fishermen. The Foreign Minister (Mr Takeo Mikl) has raised the idea of a Pacific fisheries treaty, although any conference to achieve such an agreement could only entrench the 12-mile principle, now adopted by about 65 different countries. In a series of bilateral talks with countries which have extended their territorial fishing zones, Japan

has bowed to the new order, while first securing arrangements to maintain or phaseout intruding, but established, Japanese operations. Japan’s largest fishing firm is Taiyo, whose sales total puts it among the world’s biggest fishery companies. Taiyo has 42 per cent of Japan’s 62 per cent share of this year’s 3500 blue whale unit Antarctic whaling quota. It trawls for bream off the south-west coast of Africa and the north-west coast of Australia, hunts tuna in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans, nets salmon in the North Atlantic, squid off the coast of Mauritania and the Spanish Sahara, and shrimp off India’s Malabar Coast. - One of the company’s four managing directors, Mr Tatsuo Ohtsuka, sees as inevitable an increase in the number of bi-lateral and multi-lateral fishing agreements into which Japan has already entered. Although he himself has reservations about the soundness of the scientific basis on which some of the conservation agreements have been made Taiyo takes its responsibilities under them very seriously. The agreements have to be accepted and honoured, even if they are “one of the harder things of life to bear.”

For Taiyo, this has already meant breaking up one of the firm’s three Antarctic whaling fleets and reducing its salmon fishing fleet In the North Pacific. Revenue from fishing Is a static 28 per cent of the company’s total earnings and expansion is now taking place through diversification into other food processing operations and into fields as varied as professional baseball and operating oil tankers.

In other directions, whale meat is fed to tens of thousands of mink on a big company ranch on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. Taiyo also cultivates pearls not only round the Japanese coast, but also in partnership with Australian interests on Thursday Island, at the northern tip of Cape York. Mr Ohtsuka considers that the demand for fish will inevitably rise as the world population Increases from its present 3500 million to an estimated 6000 million by the end of the century. ; Modernisation, as has hap pened in agriculture, is one possible avenue for expansion, he believes. Trawlers can range into the Arctic and Antarctic or fish to depths Of 3000 feet, double the depth of the operations. Cultivation is another possibility. Japan has salmon hatcheries and farms where elvers coming in from the sea are raised into commercial size eels. Meanwhile, Japanese enterprises have embarked on, or are planning joint ventures with local firms in Ghana. Nigeria, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Indonesian Foreign Minister (Mr Adam Malik) sees joint ventures or an agreement with Japan as the only solution to the dispute between the two countries. Indonesia has gone further than the 12-mile limit and declared all waters encircled by the Indonesian islands to be territorial. The Japanese find it difficult to accept the idea that the Java, Banda, and Flores seas are really Indonesian lakes—particularly after making Indonesia a low interest loan of s6om at a

time when that country is approximately s2ooom in debt.

After a series of arrests of Japanese vessels, negotiations with'lndonesia are under way. Japan is also in conflict with Spain over the 12-mile zone imposed along the coast of the Spanish Sahara. Ecuador, Chile and Peru have all declared 200-mile territorial waters, based on the continental shelf concept, and the harassment which Japanese boats suffer tends to make operations in these remote waters not worth while.

In successive agreements since the end of World War 11, Japan has accepted limitations on whaling, on fur sealing, and on Atlantic tuna. She has given up fishing for American-origin salmon in the eastern half of the North Pacific, and is sharing the Soviet-origin salmon in the Western-Pacific under an agreement which is progressively reducing Japan’s catch. Japan, which in 1966 bad a total catch of 7m metric tons, also accepts both Soviet and United States limitations on operations for king crab in the Northern Pacific. The bilateral agreements with the United States, with South Korea, and with New Zealand have all reduced the scope of operations. This also will be the inevitable result of the negotiations with Indonesia and, eventually, with Australia. But the conservationists argue forcefully—and the Japanese basically accept their views—that agreements are necessary if the sea is to be harvested to produce what they call its maximum sustained yield.