Chris Loew

In an attempt to further the discussions held at 2023’s Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Summit (TSSS), an industry workshop took place after the event that aimed to get sweeping opinions on the merit of using electronic monitoring (EM) on vessels operating within the waters overseen by regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs).

The latest edition of TSSS, which took place in October 2023, included talks on preventing labor abuse in the

Juvenile Pacific bluefin tuna are plentiful in Japanese coastal waters, but the country’s fishermen aren’t celebrating as a low total allowable catch (TAC) is forcing them to release target fish to avoid catching too many bluefin, losing out on lucrative mackerel and yellowtail in the process.

Juvenile bluefin – defined as bluefin under 30 kilograms – is considered a choke species, or a species with a small quota often

FRD Japan – one of four companies in the country working on large-scale, land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) salmonid-farming projects in the country – is touting its energy-efficient system as it continues construction of its commercial-scale facility.

FRD, which focuses on rainbow trout production, said its land-based system avoids introducing wasted feed or fish feces into the ocean and does not create a

China has maintained its ban on Japanese seafood following the controversial release of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, despite recent promises of a review, but some products that fall under the broad category of “marine products” are still entering the country.

Following the ban, which went into effect in August, Japan’s seafood exports to China plunged 90.8 percent year over year dipping

Tokyo, Japan-based Kyodo Senpaku is set to replace its aging mothership with a new model, signaling Japan’s continued commitment to whaling.

Kyodo Senpaku the only company in the world still employing the mothership system of whaling. The system uses more agile ships to hunt for whales, which then transfer carcasses onto a mothership for freezing and storage instead of bringing them to land-based storage facilities. Kyodo Senpaku’s

Ichiro Miyashita, Japan’s minister of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, recently suggested having Japanese prisoners shuck scallops to alleviate the lack of manual labor in the country’s seafood-processing sector – but he abandoned the plan after discovering that the U.S. and Canada don’t allow imported products made with prison labor in their supply chains.

The scheme, which Miyashita unveiled on 20 October, would

Numerous NGOs have been pushing for regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to adopt harvest strategies as a means of effectively managing seafood stocks, but even their fiercest advocates admit the path toward their adoption isn’t easy.

A harvest strategy is a method in which RFMOs and other fisheries managers develop predetermined actions that trigger when stock assessments, catch data, and return on effort – among

The first fully in-person Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Summit (TSSS) in four years – after online-only events throughout the Covid-19 pandemic – ran from 17 to 19 October, and the event highlighted human rights issues in the seafood supply chain in the wake of the bombshell Outlaw Ocean Project report on 9 October.

Since its inception in 2015, the event, co-hosted and financially supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and

A handful of Japanese supermarket chains, including AEON, the Japan Consumers’ Cooperative Union (JCCU), and Seven & i Holdings, have been early adopters in the country of procuring and marketing eco-labeled seafood products – with the latter two companies setting specific sales targets.

In 2018, JCCU set a goal that Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)- and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC)-certified product sales would comprise