Cooperative initiatives between the fishing and fish-processing industries and the conditions associated with their implementation: comparison of red snow crab production areas in Japan

Creators Kodama Takumi

The catch has been decreasing owing to problems associated with fishing grounds and fishery resources； thus, the fishing and fish-processing industries have been forced to initiate structural reorganization in production areas that were dependent on offshore fishing. Consequently, the fishing and processing industries have cooperated to remain economically viable in some of these areas. The purpose of this report is to examine the actual circumstances surrounding the establishment of such cooperative initiatives and elucidate conditions for their successful implementation. We compared red snow crab cage fishing activities between the two largest red snow crab production areas in Japan, focusing on changes in the fishing and processing industries before and after the introduction of the resource recovery plan. Our findings revealed the following: (1) because the catch decreased from the end of the 1980s, both production areas implemented the resource recovery plan at the same time, (2) debates about the addition of a fishing suspension period based on differences in the supply of raw materials resulted in the two areas adopting different approaches to resolve the problem, and (3) in Sakaiminato, which established a tripartite relationship between the fishing and processing industries and had the required technical capacity available, new organizations were created to stabilize the supply of raw materials. Very few studies on the actual circumstances of cooperative initiatives between the fishing and the fish-processing industries and conditions for their implementation have been conducted. This study contributes to the accumulation of studies on cooperative initiatives between the fishing and the fish-processing industries.

[ISSN]0370-9361