Japan blames China, Taiwan for declining Pacific saury catch
- Tokyo is planning to propose new quotas for the fish, considered an autumn delicacy, after its annual catch last year collapsed 30 per cent to a record low
- A fisheries official says the decline is due to oceanic conditions and the presence of too many foreign fishing vessels in the northern Pacific
An autumn delicacy in Japan, Pacific saury is gradually becoming harder to find and significantly more expensive, with the NPFC in 2019 forced to set annual catch quotas for the first time. The total catch limit for last year was set at 556,200 tonnes.
Japanese boats landed 29,566 tonnes over the course of the year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, down more than 27 per cent from the previous year and a record low since statistics were first kept in 1961. The previous record low was 40,517 tonnes in 2019.
Catches in the major fishing grounds off Hokkaido contracted by 46 per cent to 11,613 tonnes, while fishermen in Iwate prefecture landed 7 per cent fewer saury than in the previous year. They also complained that many of the fish they caught were smaller than usual.
At the same time, the supermarket price of saury increased 50 per cent on the previous year to an average of 480 yen ($4.66) per kilogram.