<http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,435489,00.html> Seaweed dries up in Japan
Coastal land reclamation has decimated this year's nori harvest and alarmed a sushi-loving nation, says Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Thursday February 8, 2001
Seaweed Day in Japan is usually marked by the satisfied chomping of millions of sushi balls wrapped in crispy sheets of dark-green laver. This week, however, the festive munching on 6 February was overshadowed by an alarming decline in seaweed harvests that has been blamed on the country's most notorious land-reclamation project.
The existence of an annual Seaweed Day underlines the importance that Japan places on its ocean fauna harvest and why its depletion has raised public hackles in a way that other environmental problems have largely failed to do.
Each year, shoppers snap up more than four billion sheets of nori (laver), which are torn into strips to garnish noodles or wrapped around balls of sushi.
This is nothing new. Seaweed Day marks the anniversary 1,300 years ago of a new legal code that recognized nori as a suitable tribute for the emperor.
The same could certainly not be said of the seaweed at the centre of the current storm of protest.
Until recently, Ariake Sea nori was among the most prized in Japan. Harvested in the waters off Kyushu in southern Japan, it was once prized for its dark colour - a sign of good nutrition - and crispy texture when dried.
Such was the demand and abundance of the crop, that the area supplied 40 per cent of all the nori consumed in Japan.
Last year, however, the harvest hit record low levels and the quality of the crop was shockingly bad.
Instead of a lustrous black-green, the nori was a soggy beige - and nobody wanted it. In the ten months until January, sales of laver dropped by 25 per cent.
Furious fishermen, seaweed harvesters and local politicians have no doubt where the blame lies: the five-mile-long Isahaya Bay sluice gate that was lowered in 1997 to reclaim 3,550 hectares of land.
According to conservationists, the project has devastated the ecosystems both of the dried-up wetlands inside the barrier and the sea outside.
By disrupting the flow of seawater from the East China Sea, they say, the sluice gate has allowed plankton to flourish at the expense of the nori.
More than 6,000 fisherman in 1,000 boats have staged an angry protest demanding that the government lift the barrier's 300 shutters.
The government, however, says it lacks evidence to link the reclamation project and the devastation of the seaweed crop.
It is not the first time that the Isahaya Bay project has come under fire.
The project was dreamed up 30 years ago when farmland was scarce, but Japan now has so much more agricultural land than it needs that it pays some farmers to leave their fields fallow.
Although the original logic for the project faded long ago, the powerful construction lobby encouraged bureaucrats and politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to push ahead with the plan on the grounds of flood control.
As with numerous other wasteful public works projects around Japan, critics have focused on the inefficient use of taxpayers' money, but the collapse of the nori harvest has highlighted the growing environmental costs of such ill-conceived plans.
Given the importance and prestige of seaweed in the national diet, it may yet even force the government into a rare change of heart.
The Isahaya Bay project has been blamed for the extinction of local mud skippers and other wetland animals, as well as a decline in fish stocks in surrounding waters, but none of these natural tragedies has made the same impact on the national consciousness as the deterioration of the nori crop.
Questions have been tabled in parliament, newspapers have given the subject intensive coverage and opposition party politicians have braved the elements to show solidarity with the hard-pressed nori harvesters.
So far the impact has been purely psychological, but it could soon start to hit Japanese wallets.
Nori prices around Japan have jumped by between ten and 60 per cent as a result of the poor Ariake Sea harvest and analysts warn that it is only a matter of time before the increased costs are passed on to the consumer.
If sushi prices rise, the government will find it difficult to avoid the question of why it puts public works before the environment.
Seaweed could yet force the Isahaya-Bay sluice gates open.