Japan's cormorant fishing culture under climate threat
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
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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.
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