The North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) kicked off its annual meeting Tuesday in Tokyo with discussions on how to protect marine resources, including increasingly scarce Pacific saury.
The meeting is focused on whether to adopt Japan's proposal to set an upper limit on saury catches in open seas where all parties can freely fish. Japan seems unable to prevent opposition to the proposal from China, making it uncertain whether the NPFC will be able to reach an agreement by the close of the meeting on Thursday.
Saury are known as sanma in Japan.
Japan, which conducts saury fishing mainly in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), suffered its first poor saury catch in about 50 years in 2017. To prevent overfishing, Japan decided to seek upper limits on saury catches on the high seas and submitted a written proposal for limits to the NPFC. The move was made with an eye on China's and Taiwan's rapidly increasing saury catches over the past few years.
However, at a meeting of the NPFC's scientific committee about saury resources this spring, China insisted that the amount of saury is not low enough to warrant regulation. China is expected to oppose Japan's proposal during the current meeting as well.
The NPFC is an international conference that began in 2015 at the initiative of Japan. It is comprises eight major fishing countries and regions in the North Pacific, including China, Taiwan, South Korea and Russia. In addition to saury, the commission has discussed how to protect other resources, such as mackerel.
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