insights from frontier Japan

Basket fishing for horsehair crab – which heralds the coming of spring on the Okhotsk Sea coast – has begun, with approximately 3.9 tons of horsehair crab landed at the Oumu Fishing Port in the town of Oumu in the Okhotsk region on March 17.

One hundred and fifteen fishing boats hauled ashore to avoid the drift ice off the Okhotsk Sea coast in Tokoro-cho in Kitami in eastern Hokkaido are waiting to leave the port to go fishing. Work to return the fishing boats to the sea began on March 3. March 20 is the date when, in normal years, the “opening of the sea” – when the amount of drift ice reduces enough for the boats to set sail – usually occurs.

Wintertime in Eastern Hokkaido is packed with amazing scenery and experiences not available elsewhere in Japan, like drift ice, art made from snow and ice, and the ice horizon expanse. The "East Hokkaido Express Bus" is a seasonal bus that travels to all sorts of tourist spots in wintertime Eastern Hokkaido. It gives you easy access to famous spots difficult to reach by car. Visit Eastern Hokkaido aboard buses in search of amazing experiences only available there!

On January 24, seasonally fresh iwanori seaweed harvesting started on Kamome Island in southern Hokkaido's Esashi Town. Fifteen fishermen worked at removing seaweed stuck to rocks.

Esashi Fishery Cooperative Union in the northern Hokkaido fishing town of Esashi has launched their first website introducing the fishing industries centered on scallops, aki-sake salmon, and horsehair crab and efforts to protect the bountiful natural environment. It is offered in English and Chinese as well.

Rope for an "ice boom" designed to prevent drift ice from entering the lake interior was installed at the No. 1 Lake Entrance to Lake Saroma (Kitami City), a body of water neighboring north-eastern Hokkaido's Sea of Okhotsk.

The fishery scene on the Hokkaido coast is seeing changes, possibly due to climate change. Catches of Pacific saury and Pacific flying squid, long caught in the waters around Hokkaido, have dwindled. Fishermen are finding more species usually captured in warmer waters, such as dolphinfish, in their fishing nets. Fishermen and seafood processors are being forced to adopt to the change that experts believe the rise in sea temperature in recent years may be behind.

We captured aerial drone footage of fishermen hauling in autumn salmon from fixed netting in an offing about one kilometer from Cape Notoro in northeastern Hokkaido's Abashiri City.

Hidaka Kombu Kelp is a specialty of the Pacific coast area of the Hidaka region. The process of sun-drying the kelp has begun, with the rows of drying kelp forming a striped pattern across the coastline.