About 10 years ago, seafood lovers could enjoy a plate of squid sashimi for a little over 1,000 yen ($9.25) at Ikasei in Hokkaido’s Hakodate, one of the numerous restaurants serving squid dishes in the city.

But today, the same order can cost more than 2,000 yen due to a paucity of the Japanese common squid.

“We had many days last year that no squid were shipped even though the seas were not rough,” lamented Hidefumi Murota, manager of the restaurant.

Japanese common squid had long been the most popular and accessible seafood for Japanese households.

But the catch for the current fiscal year was the worst in 50 years, sending prices skyrocketing and leaving fishing boats docked in port.

Fishermen, increasingly alarmed by the dwindling haul in recent years, are calling for measures to help restore the population of the species, including a significantly reduced quota. They say their livelihoods are on the line.

Japan will also need to enlist cooperation from China and North Korea, whose fishing boats aggressively haul squid in waters off Japan, to help the species rebound.

Hakodate, famed for a variety of dishes using Japanese common squid, is being hard hit.

With little prospect for the catch to return to previous levels after poor hauls, many squid fishermen say that it is pointless to head out to sea.

The dismal catch is also straining the makers of processed foods using squid in the city.

“Making processed foods from squid is at rock bottom,” said Shigeharu Kaneki, vice chairman of the Hakodate Special Food Products Industrial Cooperative, a group of 50 food processing companies.

Heeding the dire straits of those companies, the Hakodate city government in fiscal 2018 started providing subsidies for investment in equipment to produce processed foods from other marine sources.

But Kaneki does not see the program as much help.

“People living in Hakodate and visitors to Hakodate would not choose to have yellowtail instead here,” Kaneki said.

In the current fiscal year, only seven companies received subsidies through the end of January.

Kaneki said each year, one or two member companies of the cooperative go out of business.

POOR CATCHES SEEN ALL OVER

Japan’s squid imports surged sharply to make up for the steep drop in the catch of common squid.

The value of squid imported to Hakodate Port in all of 2019 was about 7.2 billion yen, the highest in 40 years and more than four times that of 2018.

The poor catch is not only limited to Hakodate, but other municipalities across Japan are suffering from the same problem.

According to the Fisheries Agency, haul of Japanese common squid ranged from about 150,000 tons to about 300,000 tons annually between fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2014.

But the following years saw a steep decline.

The catch from April to December 2019 stood at 21,000 tons, a drop of 30 percent from the amount in the same period in 2018, which was the worst since 1951 at that time.

To avoid going into the red, most fishermen of the Ishikawa Prefecture of Fisheries Cooperative Associations stopped catching squid at the end of December, one month ahead of the end of the fishing season.

About 10 years ago, the cooperative had 20 midsize boats in the main squid fleet, according to the organization. But 13 such boats remain today.

Data from the Fisheries Agency show that the consumption of squid, including Japanese common squid, was 995 grams per capita in 2008, the largest among seafood.

But the figure dropped to 387 grams in 2018 due to a spell of poor catches, ranking fifth after salmon, tuna, yellowtail and shrimp.

“We are concerned that the Japanese common squid may disappear from the dinner table one day,” said Takeo Shirosaka, an official with the Ogi branch of the Ishikawa Prefecture of Fisheries Cooperative Associations.

Why is Japan seeing such a poor catch of the species in recent years?

The National Institute of Aquaculture cited two factors.

One is that water temperatures in the East China Sea and Sea of Japan, spawning areas for the species, have been out of the optimal range of 18 to 23 degrees for their growth since 2015, far longer than extended periods in the past. This played a major role in the sharp decline in the squid population.

In addition, the situation was compounded by Chinese and North Korean fishing boats aggressively trying to take what was left of the squid in the areas.

NEW CATCH QUOTA CALLED 'LAX' 

To help restore the squid stock, the Fisheries Agency plans to reduce the catch quota to 57,000 tons for fiscal 2020 starting in April.

Although the planned quota for the new fiscal year is the lowest ever, many fishermen called for a further reduction when agency officials announced the plan at a meeting in late January to help restore the squid population.

The agency had cut the quota for Japanese common squid for four consecutive years through fiscal 2019.

The actual haul was less than half the quota of each year during those years.

Still, the squid stock continues falling.

“It is impossible for the squid population to increase under such a lax quota,” said Akihiro Furukawa, an official with the Oma Fisheries Cooperative in Aomori Prefecture, referring to the planned 2020 quota.

“We will all go out of business if the squid population is not restored in a couple of years,” he said.

The agency has a good reason for being reluctant to further curtail the quota.

Although China does not disclose data on the country’s haul of common squid, some researchers believe that it is up to about 200,000 tons annually, nearly 10 times Japan’s catch.

“It is pointless for Japan alone to slash the quota,” said a senior agency official, referring to China’s massive haul.

An international quota for saury was introduced for the first time last year after an extremely poor catch of the fish was recorded in the northern Pacific.

One of the fishing grounds for the common squid lies in the Sea of Japan, where Japan is locked in a dispute with other countries, including China and South Korea, over exclusive economic zones.

“It is impossible to reach an agreement over fishing through only talks by bureaucrats,” said the official.

(This article was written by Hirobumi Ohinata and Kazuya Miki.)