Sustainability of Coastal Fisheries in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan: Scope of Community-based Management Approach to Achieve the Aims of Current Japanese Coastal Fishery Policy

Japan is considered as one of the most successful marine fishery co-management or CBFM regimes. However, in 2001 the Japanese government was obliged to introduce new measures in order to recover several species under overexploitation. One example is the Resource Recovery Plans (RRP) that in all Japan accounts 51 fisheries. This paper attempts to clarify the level of sustainability of coastal fisheries in Hiroshima prefecture, and identify main problems to achieve it by coordinating organizations such as: Area Fishery Coordinating Committees (AFCC), Fishery Cooperative Associations (FCAs) and Fishery Management Organizations (FMOs). To measure the sustainability of fisheries in Hiroshima prefecture, it was used some indicators described in the well known method RAPFISH. This technique is performed using an ordination of sets of attributes using multi-dimensional scaling analysis (MSD). Besides, we focused on the problems and challenges of the current coastal policy through a case study of Toyohama FCA. It is located in Toyoshima, an small island located in Kure city jurisdiction, Seto Inland Sea. In the dimension of ecological sustainability, some important commercial fisheries presented low scores mainly in migratory fisheries. This situation affects coastal fishers in Toyohama. Important problems mentioned by the fishers of Toyohama FCA to reach a appropriate level of exploitation of fish stocks were operation of bigger scale fishers in zones close to fishing grounds and changes of environmental conditions in the spawning grounds due to operation of other industries.