It’s the end of May and gray clouds hover over an inlet teeming with hundreds of fishing boats in Suao, a fishing port in Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan. The boats had just returned from the seas around the Senkaku Islands, and the wharf was loaded with fish.
“Not much tuna today, just loads of these things,” mutters the official from the fisheries cooperative as he weighs the strange creatures with the bulging foreheads. These fish, piled up high on pickup trucks, are mahi-mahi. One kilogram of tuna will fetch a tasty 1,300 New Taiwan dollars (around 4,200 yen, or $43), but mahi-mahi will sell for a less-appetizing 150 NTD (around 490 yen, or $5).
The morning’s catch had apparently included dozens of bluefin tuna, though. The official said, somewhat cryptically, that the tuna were caught “up north,” a phrase that probably means around the Senkakus, which are located in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture.
The seas near the islands are a great place to catch fish such as bluefin tuna, mackerel and sea bream. Until recently, these waters were off-limits to Taiwanese trawlers, unless they managed to sneak past the Japan Coast Guard. This changed when Japan and Taiwan signed a fishing pact in April. Apart from a 12-nautical-mile zone around the Senkakus, from May 10, Taiwanese boats could now operate freely in waters exempt from fishing-related laws. The islands are claimed by both Japan and Taiwan, but the pact avoids any discussion of sovereignty. This suits the fishermen just fine, though.
“I don’t care who owns the islands, as long as I can fish there,” said one happy Taiwanese angler who had bagged two bluefin there a few days before.
Discussions over a fishing agreement began in 1996, but the two sides rarely saw eye to eye. After tensions between Japan and China ratcheted up over the Senkaku issue last year, though, Japan showed a new willingness to compromise, prodded by concerns of a China/Taiwan alliance. The result was the fishing pact, which gave the Taiwanese more access than they originally asked for.
An agreement may have been signed, but the people fishing the waters still had lots to sort out.
Ishigaki Island, which lies around 250 kilometers to the east of Suao, is home to the Yaeyama Fishermen’s Cooperative Association. Since May 10, the group has steered its boats well clear of the Senkakus to avoid any trouble with Taiwanese boats.
The pact covers a wide area, but bluefin tuna only congregate in a few spots, and there is a limit to how many trawlers can fish there. It would be havoc if boats converged on these spots without any operational rules in place. Nets would get snagged or torn, and boats could end up damaged to the tune of millions of yen.
The agreement may have had its Taiwanese fans, but fishermen from Okinawa were less enamored. Not only did Japan give away more than the Taiwanese had asked for, but the pact was launched without any ground rules in place. Okinawan fishing associations had repeatedly asked the government to “listen to the voice of local people,” but officials had turned a deaf ear, only deigning to reply, in fact, after the marine boundaries had already been drawn up.
Several days after the agreement came into effect, the Yaeyama Fishermen’s Cooperative Association received a request from Taiwan for “fisherman to fisherman talks.”
The request came from the Suao Fishermen’s Association. “When I heard the Okinawans were unhappy with the pact, I started worrying about possible trouble in the future,” says the association’s director, Lin Yue-ying.
The Okinawan side had asked the Taiwanese to voluntary refrain from operating in the area until the rules were properly spelled out, but this request had recently been rebuffed.
“To be honest, I didn’t know whether to meet them or not,” confesses Kiichi Uehara, the 51-year-old chairman of the Yaeyama Fishermen’s Cooperative Association, adding, “but we couldn’t just leave things as they were.”
Over May 1617, the Suao and Yaeyama parties finally met in the Okinawan capital of Naha. They were joined by the chairman of the Okinawa Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives and several officials from the relevant authorities.
The talks yielded some interesting discoveries. Longline fishing is a technique with very precise rules regarding the direction or spacing of fishing lines, for example. During the discussions, both sides realized they were actually using different longline methods.
When the meeting ended, the fishermen headed to the bar. As the alcohol flowed, tongues were loosened, and people began to speak their minds.
Uehara had heard from the Japanese government that Taiwan had 200 boats operating around the Senkakus. He asked the Taiwanese if this was true, but they told him the real figure was actually a lot less.
If so, this meant the Taiwanese side had deliberately inflated the figures to squeeze out more concessions during the pact negotiations.
The cogs began whirring in Uehara’s mind. If the actual figures were less, then perhaps they could find a way of working together. The next meeting is scheduled for around August.
This was not the first time Uehara had met directly with Taiwanese fishermen.
In fact, Ishigaki city and Suao have had close relations since 1995, when they became sister cities.
Connections between Ishigaki Island and Taiwan increased during the pre-war and inter-war periods, when Taiwan was a Japanese colony. Many Ishigaki residents headed to Taiwan to earn a living, while many Taiwanese headed the other way to set up life in Ishigaki. According to the Yaeyama chapter of the Overseas Chinese Association in Ryukyu Islands, Ishigaki Island is still home to around 500 households led by native-born Taiwanese or their descendants.
Japanese and Taiwanese fishermen commonly cross paths on the high seas, while the latter sometimes come to Ishigaki for help if they get injured or their boats get damaged.
When Uehara was invited to Suao in October 2011, this was his first chance to talk directly with his Taiwanese counterparts.
“If we hadn’t met them before, we might not have been inclined to meet them again while this trouble continues.”
Uehara looked again at the map drawn up by the fishing pact, only this time from the Taiwanese viewpoint.
“When you look at the size of the exclusive economic zone that Japan claims near the Senkaku Islands, you realize just how small the waters on the Taiwanese side are. They have to make a living, too. I feel quite sorry for them,” he says.
Japan/Taiwan negotiations may have led to a fishing pact, but the fishermen still need to find a way to coexist. Uehara is hopeful, though. “We just need to sit down together and hammer out some rules. There is no other way.”
The Asahi Shimbun Company