Study on the profitability improvement of the fishing boat fishery analysis of fishery of offshore longline at Kesennuma City in Miyagi Prefecture

At one time Japan was one of the world’s major fishing nations. The continuation of fishery management has gotten into difficulties in Japan since the 90’s. The reason is the decrease in marine resources and reinforcement of the international regulation, lower price of fish following an increase in import marine products, and soaring fuel prices. The decline of fishery is brought by the deterioration of external environment conditions such as the economic and market conditions and internal environment conditions such as management capability in Japan. The purpose of this study is to explore the profitability improvement of the management of the fishing boat fishery paying attention to internal environment conditions of fishery management. Fishery with a ship, boat or vessel is defined as the fishing boat fishery in contrast to aquaculture and fixed-net fishing. I set two subjects to achieve the purpose mentioned above in this study. First, I clarified the business condition of the fishing boat fishery in Japan. Second, I examined an approach to improve profitability of the fishing boat fishery. With reference to documents and statistics documents, I used return on sales as an index and analyzed business condition. Taking up fishery of offshore tuna longline at Kesennuma City as an example, I evaluated fishing ground productivity and choice of the operation method and choice of the fishing ground. Profitability improvement is defined as the profit that does not come to have a deficit when deducting the total cost from landing proceeds. In other words, the policy of the profitability improvement aims at return on sales to become a non-minus number. The fishery of tuna longline is one kind of the fishery to represent fishing boat fishery in Japan. The fishery of tuna longline is comprised of inshore, offshore, and pelagic. There is the fishery of offshore tuna longline in a position of a nucleus-like local industry in the coastal fishing village areas of Miyagi, Miyazaki, and Kochi. The ups and downs of this fishery decide the vicissitudes of the fishing village regional economy. As a result of having examined the business condition of the fishing boat fishery in Japan from return on sales, the return on sales showed a periodic change between a plus and loss from 1975 through 2000. The return on sales has resulted in negative value every year since 2000 and is a tendency to drop more. It is revealed that fishery management turned for the worse. The fishery of