insights from frontier Japan

The Habomai Fisheries Cooperative in the Nemuro region of eastern Hokkaido began diving for sea urchin on the Pacific side of the Nemuro Peninsula on November 1. Diving for sea urchin usually starts in early December, but the start of the fishing season has been brought forward due to the increasing damage caused by the red tide.

Lying comfortably on its mother’s abdomen is a baby sea otter (pup). As its fur is still soft, it is unable to dive beneath the water. 　The pup’s fur is meticulously groomed by the mother otter; air is allowed to flow between the hairs, providing buoyancy and insulation to protect it from the cold sea water. As the mother dives beneath the water in search of food, the pup floats silently on the surface of the water as it waits for her return.

The ban on large-scale fishing vessels (at least 100 tons), which are the mainstay of Pacific-saury net fishing in eastern Hokkaido, was lifted on August 20. Despite the forecast of low numbers of saury arriving in the region, 50 boats departed from three ports in the Kushiro-Nemuro subprefecture at just after midnight on that day, and headed towards international waters approximately 1,500 km away.

While enjoying a walk amid a refreshing breeze on a footpath that stretches from residential land in Chuo-ku in the city of Sapporo to the midst of the mountains, I hear the echoes of a black woodpecker in the distance.

A banner celebrating tennis player Osaka Naomi’s second Australian Open women’s singles title was hung from the City Hall building in the city of Nemuro in the eastern Hokkaido region on February 21.

It is late autumn in the Pacific Ocean. In waters off the unpopulated Moyururi Island of eastern Hokkaido's Nemuro City, some ten or more sea otters gather together and float luxuriously on the water surface.