Photo/Illutration Transport ministry staff enter an office of Shiretoko Pleasure Boat in Shari, Hokkaido, to conduct a special audit on April 24. (Kengo Hiyoshi)

Four companies in Hokkaido that operate pleasure boat trips in the spectacular Shiretoko Peninsula, where a tragedy is unfolding, had an agreement to watch each others’ backs in case of foul weather.

They are all based at Utoro Port in Shari, Hokkaido, a hub for sightseeing cruises in the Shiretoko Peninsula since around 2000.

One of them is Shiretoko Pleasure Boat, which operated a small boat that went missing in stormy weather April 23 with 26 people on board.

But the cooperative relationship was broken around five or six years ago when Shiretoko Pleasure Boat inexplicably decided to go it alone.

“In foul weather, we tell each other, ‘Let’s not leave port today,” said Hiroya Sugawara, president of Dolphin, one of the four companies.

“To guard against accidents, we need to be in good contact with each other,” Sugawara, 67, said.

When submitting a safety management code to the transport ministry as required by the Marine Transportation Law, the four companies decided to share the same standards in terms of management and policies to ensure that boats filled with passengers arrived back safely from outings that normally last no more than three hours.

When weighing the pros and cons of whether to venture out, they assessed prevailing weather conditions, such as wind velocity, the height of waves and visibility at sea.

Each of the four companies scrutinized the weather report each evening during the pleasure boat season that generally starts in late April and ends in October.

Additionally, one of the companies on behalf of the others sends out a boat each morning to check the conditions at sea about 4 kilometers to the northeast.

They also contact fishing fleets to find out about the state of the weather in more distant locations.

Boats do not venture out if the wind velocity reaches more than 28.8 kph and waves gust higher than 1.5 meters.

But the arrangement collapsed in 2016 after a management change at Shiretoko Pleasure Boat.

After the current president took over, the company broke away from the cooperative system.

“We told the company it is not safe, but the company refused to listen to us and has been operating tours,” Sugawara said.

The company acted at its own discretion in deciding when to put out to sea.

Since around five years ago, Shari businesses based in Utoro Port, including small boat tour operators, local fishery cooperatives and tourism promotion organizations, have met before the start of the Golden Week holidays that run from late April to early May to exchange information relating to safety.

The purpose of the meeting is to share information on each other’s planned routes, frequency of trips and period of operation to prevent accidents and help each other out in an emergency.

The latest meeting was held two days prior to the April 23 tragedy. 

It was unanimously agreed not to start operations until April 29, the first day of the holiday period.

Shiretoko Pleasure Boat, however, decided to start early from April 23.

“Had the company started at the same time with (the rest of us), other boats could have noticed that something was amiss sooner,” Sugawara said.

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