Earthquake damage occurred in an area stretching about 500km north to south from Iwate Prefecture (capital Sendai) to Tokyo along the East Japan coastline and up 100km inland in some areas just north of Tokyo. The scale of damage and destruction made this the worst earthquake disaster in Japan in recent times.

According to the National Police Agency 15,782 people died and 4,086 people are missing following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that damaged or destroyed over 270,000 buildings and caused flooding up to 10km inland in places.

Supply still affected

The disaster affected a large number of industrial, commercial and other enterprises in the Tohoku region and adjacent areas. Today, seven months after the earthquake struck, the supply of fishery and agricultural products in Northern Japan is still affected.

Tohoku traditionally is one of Japan’s major seafood producing regions with a number of fishing ports being home to deepwater and tuna fishing fleets. The region suffered widespread damage to its fishing industry which in some areas could take years to recover.

“Tohoku was 20% of Japan’s fisheries production. That area was capable of supplying one fifth of our country’s seafood,” said Masashi Nishimura, publicity manager in Japan Fisheries Association’s (JFA) operations division.

“The tsunami was more serious than the earthquake. Many processing plants were destroyed by the tsunami and a lot of fishing boats were destroyed in ports. A lot of fishermen and fishery processing workers died.”

Japan’s total annual fisheries output is around 5.6 million tons. Although fishing has resumed in some areas in Tohoku, current production is just a fraction of output before the tsunami occurred.

Just how much of the nation’s fish catch will be lost this year remains to be seen. A 10% drop in fishery production would be 550,000 tons; a 20% fall would be 1.1 million tons which is a large amount of fish catch to lose.

According to the Japanese government, 319 fishing ports in seven prefectures stretching from Hokkaido in the north to Chiba near Tokyo were damaged in the March disaster which affected more than 10% of the country’s 2,914 fishing ports.

Worse hit towns

Worst hit were fishing towns in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures where nearly all fishing ports were destroyed along with storage facilities, processing plants and many fishing boats.

The three prefectures sold Yen 13.4bn (US$162m) worth of fish through Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market alone last year, much of it tuna caught by tuna longline fishing fleets. Few fish have been caught by the prefectures’ fleets since the tsunami struck.

Miyagi Prefecture is the worst affected with all 142 of the prefecture’s fishing ports being destroyed by the tsunami. Miyagi is Japan’s second largest fisheries producer with the prefecture’s fishermen recording an annual catch of about 380,000 tons.

More than 12,000 of Miyagi’s 14,000 fishing vessels were lost, according to prefectural fishery officials, as the tsunami struck when most boats were in port.

Iwate Prefecture’s fishing industry also was badly affected with the tsunami destroying 108 of the prefecture’s 111 fishing ports. According to Iwate Prefectural government, some 9,672 of the prefecture’s fish boats were destroyed by the tsunami.

Nearly all of Iwate’s fish markets, fishery processing plants and marine culture farms were destroyed as well with total damages to the prefecture’s fishing industry estimated at Yen 371.5bn at the start of September.

Tohoku’s fishing industry faces many problems restarting due to damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

“Tohoku fishermen have started again. There are still problems landing fish in Tohoku as many ports are damaged and not fully working.” Mr Nishimura said. “Ishinomaki fishing port, the second largest in Tohoku, is still seriously damaged but fish are being landed there. Fishery distribution is very complex in Japan. Not all fish stay around for local consumption.”

Fish prices, surprisingly, have been little affected by the Tohoku disaster.

“With 20% of supply lost this is supposed to push seafood prices up but retail fish prices haven’t changed much,” Mr Nishimura noted. “Part of the reason is that probably some consumers have refrained from eating fish due to worries about radiation contamination leaking into the sea from Fukushima nuclear power station.”

Emergency budgets

As part of a wider programme to rebuild devastated communities in Tohoku and support reconstruction of the region’s economic base, the Japanese government so far has approved two emergency supplementary budgets to rebuild Tohoku’s fisheries industry. Both comprise a combination of loans and grants.

The first emergency budget was approved in April, soon after the earthquake and tsunami occurred. This involves four separate packages including Yen 25bn to rebuild and repair fishing ports, and to cover the cost of investigating damage to the fisheries sector including processing plants, fishing vessels and related equipment.

Another package worth Yen 27bn was approved to purchase new fishing vessels and fishing gear, and Yen 26bn to assist rebuilding the marine aquaculture sector.

In addition, the government approved a provision of Yen 86bn to be allocated to re-insurance companies to help pay out fishing industry insurance claims.

Additional financial help for the fishing industry was included in the government’s second emergency budget to support programmes to rebuild Tohoku which recently was steered through Parliament.

The loans and grants that have been approved are intended to fund reconstruction costs not covered in the first emergency budget.

For Tohoku’s fishing industry the second emergency budget includes a package worth Yen 19bn to cover the cost of replacing equipment and other facilities used by the seafood processing sector.

Meanwhile, Japan Fisheries Association, as the umbrella organisation for all groups involved in Japan’s fishing industry, is playing a disaster information coordinating role to assist Tohoku’s fishing industry recover from the earthquake and tsunami damage.

Immediately after the disaster occurred, the association set up a disaster headquarters in its Tokyo head office with Fishery Association President, Toshiro Shirasu, as Chief of the Eastern Japan Earthquake Disaster Relief Headquarters.

As part of his new responsibilities, Mr Shirasu has visited Tohoku’s largest, more seriously damaged fishing ports to inspect the situation at first hand including Kesennuma, Ofunato, Shiogama, Ishinomaki and Onagawa.

“The primary responsibility of the Disaster Relief Headquarters is to collect information on the disaster damage and to find out what help our members needed. We gave this information to the government,” Mr Nishimura explained.

“Our main objective is to coordinate those organisations that can help, such as those with materials and equipment, with the needs of the fishing industry; also, to seek contributions in Japan and overseas to help bereaved families and affected people. Relief donations at the start of July were Yen 137m.”

Efforts to support the Tohoku region include efforts by various organisations to promote goods made in Tohoku across Japan. In addition to traditional fishery products including dried fish and squid, sake and other traditional foods also are being promoted to support Tohoku’s economic revival.

“There are a lot of organised events to promote food from Tohoku. These events are everywhere and not just in supermarkets,” Mr Nishimura remarked.

Japan Fishery Association’s coordinating role and involvement will continue as the government’s emergency budget programme to reconstruct Tohoku’s fishing industry moves forward.

“Fundamental assistance is being given by the government. Also, there is a need to redesign the affected fishing communities,” Mr Nishimura said. “Fishing ports and processing plants are located on the coast but some fishermen commute to work from inland mountainous areas.

“Our association is not involved directly in this but we are helping coordinate discussions over rebuilding fishing communities.”

Although the first emergency budget has been allocated and fishermen are applying for support to resume their occupations, local press reports suggest that many fishermen will face a long wait due to the large demand for new fishing boats and other facilities.

New vessels

According to a recent report in the Japan Times, central and local governments together with local fisheries associations are subsidising almost the full cost of purchasing new vessels for fishermen in devastated coastal communities.

However, this has generated a large number of orders for new fishing boats along Tohoku’s tsunami-hit coastline. Fishing boat builders are unable to meet demand and so many fishermen will have to wait.

In the badly hit fishing town of Miyako, for example, the local fisheries cooperative is concerned that fewer than 100 new boats for fishing abalone will be delivered in time for the peak fishing period for abalone in November compared with the 540 abalone fishing boats that were in use before the tsunami struck.

In Otsuchi, another fishing town along the Iwate coast, only 30 of the town’s 650 fishing boats survived the disaster. Rebuilding the fleet will take more than one year.

In addition, marine farming facilities around Otsuchi were destroyed by the tsunami and there are no plans to rebuild two of the town’s four devastated fishing ports in the near future.

Fishing ports that are open still face numerous problems as storage and processing plants still have to be repaired or rebuilt.

In addition, the Japanese government says that debris from the tsunami, estimated as tens of millions of tons, is still floating off the Tohoku coast and washing up at ports.

Government plans call for debris floating dangerously in shipping lanes and blocking ports to be cleared up by the end of the currently financial year ending 31 March 2012.

Restoring public confidence in fishery products from Tohoku will also be important in rebuilding the region’s fisheries industry. The nuclear reactor crisis at Fukushima power station that resulted in radiation leaking into the sea caused many consumers to stop eating fishery products, fearing they were contaminated and could cause cancer if eaten.

Although fish such as tuna are not likely to be contaminated with radiation, the seaweed industry could face bigger problems as iodine accumulates far more in seaweed than in other marine organisms.

Fishermen are waiting to see whether cultivation of wakame seaweed will be affected. Commonly used in Japanese cuisine including miso soup, the majority of wakame seaweed comes from Iwate and Miyagi. Production of other common mariculture species such as oysters, scallops and regional delicacies such as sea squirts also has been badly affected by the Tohoku disaster.

Meanwhile, the number of fishermen working in the Tohoku region is expected to fall as more information is gathered about the fate of fishing communities. Authorities in Miyagi and some other prefectures still have no idea how many fishermen were killed by the terrifying tsunami wave.

One concern is that many Japanese fishermen are passed retirement age and may not feel energetic enough to rebuild their smallholder fishing occupations. The government already is trying to encourage young Japanese people to take up commercial fishing, realising that fishing communities are the custodians of Japan’s coastal cultural traditions which the nation wants to preserve.