Japan's cormorant fishing culture under climate threat

Bangkok Post Group

As climate change creates increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, the centuries-old Japanese tradition of cormorant fishing is under threat, along with the economy developed around it. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00 In Japan, cormorant fishing is seen as the ideal way of catching the Ayu river fish and

00:06 has become a popular tourism spectacle.

00:10 But fisherfolk there say the changing climate is shrinking their catch as they worry for

00:14 the future of their centuries-old tradition.

00:21 These Japanese fishermen are catching Ayu sweetfish using a traditional fishing practice

00:26 called "ukai".

00:27 Each of these strings are leashed to a cormorant who do the actual fishing.

00:32 They're trained to heed the human fish's commands.

00:35 The seabirds catch the fish that are darting away from the flames and the leash on their

00:39 necks and bodies keeps them from swallowing the larger, sellable fish.

00:44 The master fisherman then coaxes the birds to release the fish into a bucket.

00:49 Yuichiro Adachi is one of just 48 people in Japan who still practice ukai, a ritual once

00:55 common in Japan with a version also practiced in China.

01:03 Once it gets dark, when the sun has gone down enough that you can't see the ground and the

01:06 sweetfish are sleeping, you raise up a flame and start ukai fishing.

01:14 When you do that, it surprises the sweetfish so they start moving around trying to get

01:18 away.

01:19 That's how the cormorants get them.

01:23 Adachi is the 18th generation of his family to be a master cormorant fisherman in the

01:28 Otsu township north of Nagoya.

01:31 His family has long been a supplier of the sweetfish delicacy for Japan's imperial household.

01:38 But times and the climate are changing.

01:41 As the planet warms, weather patterns are becoming more unreliable.

01:45 Heavier rains are making the once calm Nagara River more prone to flooding.

01:50 And the 48-year-old fisherman says the problem is not just a change in water levels.

01:56 In the past, there were only big boulders, but now they're small.

01:59 The sand and gravel has increased.

02:01 And along with that, the sweetfish have gotten smaller too.

02:04 That's my feeling.

02:05 Gifu University River Engineering Professor Morihiro Harada says the sand and gravel are

02:11 coming from flood prevention works.

02:18 Due to the warming of recent years, major flooding has become much more likely.

02:22 So the managers of the river have rapidly increased the pace of river improvement works.

02:27 The sweetfish like to eat algae attached to large rocks.

02:31 But the rocks are being covered up with gravel and sand, so the sweetfish can't get to them.

02:39 The changing climate is also hitting the ukai industry in Gifu City downriver from Otsu,

02:45 which has turned to tourism for more income.

02:49 Fleets of boats allow visitors to eat and drink as they watch the master fishers and

02:53 their birds.

02:54 But the chairman of an economic development body known as Organ, Yusuke Kaba, said the

03:00 unpredictable weather is causing a growing number of cancellations.

03:06 He even recalled times when tour boats were washed all the way to the mouth of the Nagara

03:10 River.

03:11 To adapt to the challenges, his group is now trialling a more luxury viewing deck with

03:16 trainee geishas and other traditional performers.

03:20 But as the river temperature rises to a high of 30 degrees Celsius or 86 Fahrenheit, which

03:26 can delay the spawning period of the ayu by a month, the future of the sweetfish and the

03:32 13-century-old ukai tradition remains at the mercy of climate change.

03:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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