In recent years, we've frequently seen news reports stating that "fish catches have decreased." According to production statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the catch peaked at 12.82 million tons in 1984, has been steadily declining, and reached 3.92 million tons in 2022, a reduction to about one-third.
Salmon, which is closely tied to Japanese food culture, is also one of the fish species that is decreasing. In the latter part of the interview, we asked Yusuke Ota, a fish leather artisan who has been dealing with fish for many years, about the challenges he feels firsthand and the solutions derived from his fresh perspective.
Yusuke Ota
Born in 1997 in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture. Started fishing at the age of 3. After graduating from university, he traveled by bicycle, eating the fish he caught, and then moved to Hokkaido. He learned about products made from salmon skin leather at an Ainu museum and became convinced of the potential of fish skin. He launched the fish leather brand "Dear Fish" with the desire to "create something that can be incorporated more closely into daily life, utilizing the beauty of fish skin seen in nature." Currently, as a regional revitalization cooperator in Onagawa Town, the first place in Japan to successfully farm coho salmon and the top producer of farmed coho salmon, he organizes events for fishing enthusiasts and is active as an angler.
(※Article content is based on information at the time of the interview)
The Current State of Fish, People, and the Environment as Seen Through 400 Fishing Experiences Annually
──In the first part, I asked about your journey from a fishing enthusiast to a fish leather craftsman. The more I hear, the more your passion for fishing and fish, which goes beyond a mere hobby, comes through.
I mentioned that I started fishing at age 3, so I've been doing it for about 25 years. A few years ago, I used to go fishing about 400 times a year.
──That's more than once a day (laughs)!
Through fishing, I've had many opportunities to interact with various fish, and I've noticed a change in my own awareness. Especially in the last few years, I've started to feel a desire to engage more deeply with fish and to approach fishing with more seriousness.
──What exactly do you mean by engaging seriously with fish?
It means facing one fish every day. Not in broad categories like "sea bass" or "char," but repeatedly engaging with a single fish right in front of me, hundreds or thousands of times. When I do that, I start to really see the individuality of each fish and the beauty they possess.
──When I look at fish at the supermarket, I rarely see individual differences beyond species, but you can tell, Mr. Ota.
That's right. However, what I've come to see by repeatedly facing individual fish is not just their aesthetic beauty. Gradually, I also began to understand the problems these fish are currently facing.
──What kind of problems are fish facing?
Currently, a very difficult situation has arisen at the boundary between the natural environment and the human living environment. For example, among freshwater animals, char, which is the most abundant fish species, has native strains in the rivers where they live, but sometimes these native strains are lost due to stocking and other factors. There are also artificial environmental changes, such as the construction of dams, which reduce the natural flow of rivers.
──Indeed. That's a huge problem for fish.
On the other hand, dams are built to protect human lives, minimizing damage when natural disasters occur. The fish ecosystem, human living environment, natural disasters... different people are in charge of each. One of the reasons social problems occur is that people from these different jurisdictions are involved with a single river, each from their own perspective.
──I see. So, even if different perspectives lead to separate measures, they won't fundamentally solve the problem.
"Taking Catches for Granted" Is No Longer Valid: The Evolution of Fish
──I'm also concerned about other news, especially the decrease in salmon catches. As someone who interacts with fish daily, what do you think is the cause?
I'm not a specialized researcher, so I can't give a definitive answer, but I'm focusing on the movement of the Kuroshio Current in the Pacific Ocean. The Kuroshio large meander, which usually occurs every 1 to 3 years, continued for 9 consecutive years until last year. The Kuroshio is a warm current, and it's supposed to rise from the Okinawa side and exit from Chiba, but during the large meander, it kept flowing north, and the cold Oyashio Current was very weak.
As a result, salmon catches on the Pacific coast of Tohoku plummeted. In Minamisanriku Town in northeastern Miyagi Prefecture, where about 120 fish were previously confirmed, only 3 were caught last year.
──Only 3 fish!
I believe such changes in ocean currents are one cause, but this doesn't explain the situation on the Sea of Japan side. If there's another cause, it must be the changes in river environments.
More rivers have become inaccessible to salmon due to dam construction, and spawning grounds have decreased due to embankment work... However, they are also adapting and evolving almost every year in response to environmental changes.
──Eh?! What kind of evolution are they undergoing?
It's probably a bigger decision and a bigger evolution than we humans perceive. The chum salmon, the most common type of salmon caught in Japan, is said to have a return rate of 90% to the tributary of the river where it was born. This rate decreases with each evolution, and the pink salmon, the newest species among salmonids, has a return rate of about 40%.
──I always thought that salmonids always return to the river where they were born.
Pink salmon choose rivers with environments suitable for their progeny's prosperity to migrate upstream. If the current situation is their ultimate adaptation to the environment, then I believe the regions in Tohoku where salmon have historically migrated may no longer be habitable for them.
Because they selectively choose breeding grounds, many salmon are leaving Japan, and catches are decreasing. Could such a dramatic evolution be happening among them?
──How do you view the background of such problems, Mr. Ota?
Firstly, I believe that as society has developed to suit modern humans, rivers have become increasingly difficult environments for wild creatures to live in.
And another is a matter of awareness. In the Edo period, there was a time when salmon almost disappeared due to the idea that "resources are endless, so let's exhaust them."
At that time, a man named Buheiji Aoto in Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture, restored the number of migrating salmon by changing the river environment. He was also the first person in Japan to successfully artificially hatch salmon, focusing on their homing ability.
Even today, not a few people perceive resources as "endless," and I believe that the slow realization of the finite nature of resources is one of the causes.
To Spark "Questions" about the Current State of Fish
──You've told us about various problems surrounding fish, such as population decline and dam issues. Could you tell us about any particular challenges you feel most strongly about?
It's almost as if there are only challenges, but if I had to pick, it would be "knowledge about fish" and "knowledge about the environment where fish live." There's a film director I respect who addresses social issues, and he once said, "We're not able to continuously create questions in society, and that's a huge waste." I deeply resonated with that.
──And that applies to fish as well.
I feel that one significant challenge right now is the need to create questions in an engaging way – that is, to confront each problem, organize it, scrutinize it, and formulate questions – regarding fish, of course, but also the people involved with fish and their environment, asking "Why is this environment the way it is?" and "Why are these fish like this?"
──The more you learned about fish, the more you began to see social problems that extended beyond just fish.
The environmental issues I've been discussing are not at all visible to the world. On the other hand, through fishing, I've interacted with many fish, and with each individual fish, so I wanted to create a way for people to become more interested in fish, even in the current ambiguous relationship between humans and fish.
That's when I realized that the leather culture shown to me by the ancient Ainu people could be a new starting point.
──So the origin of fish leather was a concern about the environment surrounding fish.
Could a new approach, modern leather, create an opportunity for people living today to engage with fish? And I wanted to create a way for people to truly see the fish from Onagawa Town, the town closest to where I live now, so I started making fish leather with coho salmon.
※Onagawa Town, Miyagi Prefecture, is the first place in Japan to successfully farm coho salmon and boasts the highest farmed production volume in Japan.
──By developing fish leather, you are trying to convey hidden issues such as dams and fish depletion, aren't you? Please tell us what you hope to achieve in the future.
In the past, many children used to play in rivers and had opportunities to interact with fish with genuine interest, but now I feel that fewer people are interested in fish and river environments.
Therefore, I hope that through fish leather activities, interest will be generated not only in fish but also in the environment in which they live, and that we can gradually build a world where we can coexist with fish within society.
──The many challenges surrounding fish seem difficult to tackle at an individual level. However, taking a fish leather product in hand and discovering its individuality and charm is not only far from difficult but also an exhilarating experience, and the new insights gained from such an unfamiliar product are fascinating. From Mr. Ota's hands, a stone was cast into the future of fish, which are closely intertwined with Japanese life, especially its fish-eating culture. I felt a growing expectation for a near future where this "awareness" would spread like ripples in water.
