What is Environment-friendly fisheries?

I appeared on the NHK TV program "Close-up Gendai (modern)" of July 24, 2007. The title of this program is "Will fish disappear? Seek environment-fiendly fisheries". This is exactly what I usually address.

Japanese fisheries exploit many marine living resources, including sardine, anchovy, Pacific saury ("samma"), sea-urchin, sea-cucumber, and sea-squirt (Matsuda 1996). We have a long series of species based catch statistics of these resources. Therefore, Japanese coastal fisheries monitor the status of marine ecosystems.

We enjoy a huge ecosystem services from marine ecosystems. The landing from fisheries is just a small part of these services. In other words, sustainable fisheries may be supported by rich marine ecosystems.

Therefore, sustainable fisheries may play a role as "keystone" top predator of marine ecosystems. Fisheries are endangered by their own overexploitation, environment degradation, habitat loss caused by development of shore area and rivers, pollution, exotic species and change in world fisheries market. In a similar way to agriculture and forestry, we may recognize the importance of environment-friendly fisheries (FAO).

In addition, if we promote to import products of environment-friendly fisheries, we could contribute on conservation of the world marine ecosystems.

H. Matsuda (1996) Japanese creativity in eco-systems management: the case of fisheries management during 1975-1988. in "Kyoto Conference on Japanese Studies 1994" (ed. International Research Center for Japanese Studies), 2:67-75.