Smuggling Haunts Fishermen in Disaster-Hit Northeastern Japan

September 28, 2018

Kamaishi, Iwate Pref.- In coastal areas in the northeastern prefectures of Iwate and Miyagi, hit hard by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, local fishermen are struggling to find countermeasures against smuggling.

In 2016, four men were arrested red-handed by the local office of the Japan Coast Guard for smuggling some 3,200 abalones in the Ogatsu district in Ishinomaki in Miyagi. Local residents have moved to higher ground after the coastal city was hit by the tsunami, leaving the areas vulnerable to smuggling due to less surveillance.

Expensive equipment such as heavy machinery has been stolen in blind spots by a massive dike as well.

"We're discussing installing security cameras, but how many cameras are enough for covering the large beaches?" a senior official of the local fisheries cooperative said.

Abalones, called a bonus for fishermen, are an important source of income for fisheries operators in the Sanriku coastal area of the Tohoku northeastern region.

In the town of Otsuchi in Iwate, members of the Shin Otsuchi fisheries cooperative conduct patrols by rotation.

The number of cooperative members has decreased to one-third of the predisaster level and the members have grown older as well.

"The patrols are a big burden," a local fisheries operator said.

Since last year, the Shin Otsuchi fisheries cooperative has conducted demonstration tests for drones equipped with artificial intelligence for use to monitor smuggling, in cooperation with a Tokyo-based company.

Autonomously flying a preset route, the drone captures images of smugglers detected by the AI and emails the images to users with location coordinates. The drone can operate in night hours as it features an infrared camera, officials said.

Meanwhile, fisheries cooperatives suffering from a decline in fish catches face limited budgets for measures against smuggling.

"Devising countermeasures against smuggling is a challenge for the whole prefecture," the head of a fisheries cooperative who joined a drone demonstration test in Kamaishi in Iwate said, expressing hopes for administrative assistance, including subsidies for introducing such drones.

In August, the Miyagi prefectural fisheries cooperative launched patrols in areas near fisheries ports in cooperation with the Miyagi prefectural police department and others and called on locals to provide information about suspicious people or vessels. Such patrols use vehicles of the fisheries cooperative and the police.

"We'll take countermeasures steadily using information offered from fisheries operators and local residents," a source from the Miyagi prefectural fisheries cooperative said. Jiji Press