Excerpt from Tuna Longline Fishery and Fishing Grounds

On the one hand it was forced to accept restrictions which can only be called mortal in the form of an iron chain of limitations upon its fishing areas, and on the other hand it lost a large number of fishing vessels and the excellent advanced bases in Okinawa, Formosa, the Ogas awara Islands, and the mandated South Sea islands. With even the materials necessary for fishing difficult to obtain, the problems faced by this fishery were certainly not easy ones.

When we look at the course taken by this fishery from the end of the war to the present day, we see that despite the many difficulties and obstacles mentioned above the tonnage of its fishing vessels has already in a comparatively short period recovered to a level close to that of before the war. This fact demonstrates the unstinted efforts of the people engaged in this fishery, efforts which are truly worthy of admiration. However, considering this situation cold 1y, we must also admit that the rapid tempo of recovery in this fishery reflects the confusion in Japanese fisheries circles after the war and the fact that this fishery became the object of investment as a measure to relieve the depression in other industries. Consequently, it can hardly be said that this fishery has undergone a substantially healthy recovery. In fact, it has a character which can hardly be considered under the heading of rapid progress. Now, 4 years after the war, the tuna industry cannot be said to be as promising as was hoped at the beginning of its new start, but it appears rather to be fraught with many problems and hardships.

The cause of these problems and hardships is probably the same as that of the hardships which beset the Japanese fishing industry as a whole, that is the restriction on fishing grounds. In part too it should probably be considered due to the overall abnormality of the Japanese fisheries in recent years caused by so-called oceanographic abnormalities.

Because the waters opened to Japan's fisheries are largely those off her Pacific coast, a good deal of objectivity can probably be detected in the fact that the tuna fishery has been temporarily in the spotlight and has come in for a great deal of attention. When we come to the question of how much of a scientific nature there was in the manner in which this attention was given to the fishery, we cannot unfortunately give any answer. The sad fact is that we have hard ly any scientific knowledge which could have been considered in connection With this fishery. Expressed concretely, what we mean by knowledge of a scientific nature would be such things as how many vessels should be permitted to operate in the waters allowed to na, in view of the size of the resources, and how much they could be expected to produce. With regard to such ques tions, is there not at present almost no one who could give an accurate analysis?

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