The power of the Fisheries Future Summit to transform Japan's fisheries industry from the ground up (Part 1)

The 6th Japan Sustainable Seafood Awards (JSSA) was held in 2025. In the collaboration category, the Fisheries Future Summit, which considers the future of Japan's oceans from a field perspective, was selected as the champion.

The Fisheries Future Summit, chaired by Tsuda Yuki, CEO of Fisherman Japan Marketing, is a co-creation summit in the form of a retreat where fishermen, fisheries companies, researchers, and others from around the country gather to discuss "what can be done from the field" in order to ensure that Japan's fisheries industry continues into the future. The summit was highly praised for bringing together stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and linking honest discussions to actual projects and policy proposals, leading to the award.

We asked Tsuda about his thoughts behind the Fisheries Future Summit, as well as the projects and policy recommendations that emerged from the summit.

A place where fishermen and other people involved in the fisheries industry from all over Japan can gather and gain new insights.

--You have held the Fisheries Future Summit twice so far. Please tell us about the background to the launch of the summit, its characteristics, and the thoughts behind holding it.

The issues surrounding Japan's marine environment and fisheries resources can no longer be resolved by a single region. To that end, the Fisheries Future Summit was held to share these issues with the whole of Japan and to create a forum for discussion among people from diverse backgrounds, including fishermen, companies involved in the fisheries industry, and researchers. We hope that people from a variety of backgrounds will participate in this summit and gain new insights from each other's perspectives.

At the Fisheries Future Summit, after a two-day training camp, participants who want to do something on their own will propose a project and then recruit supporters to turn it into a project. The summit's greatest feature is that it does not end with discussion, but rather the parties involved take the initiative and create "moving projects" one after another.

So far, the summit has been held twice, in 2024 (Sanriku) and 2025 (Kagoshima), and already more than a dozen projects have been launched, with fishermen from all over Japan taking the lead in exchanging information and working to achieve results. I feel that it is a great achievement that the projects born from this summit have led to actual action.

The Fisheries Future Summit (2024) was created as a forum for fishermen and other people involved in the fisheries industry from all over Japan to gather and discuss the issue.

Numerous projects are underway, with successive government proposals and other results.

--Currently, 18 projects born out of the Fisheries Future Summit are underway. Could you introduce some noteworthy projects among them?

This time, let me introduce three of them.

The first is the "Sussea Promotion, Education, and Sales Expansion Project." To change the current situation where awareness of sustainable seafood is still low, we are approaching places where consumers naturally come into contact with it. For example, we are encouraging conveyor belt sushi chains and hotels, which are popular with a wide range of generations, from children to adults, to handle sustainable seafood, and we have set up a sustainable seafood food truck at EXPO 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo.

We have also taken steps to redefine what sustainable seafood is in the first place, and have held around 10 study sessions so far, with the aim of making sustainable seafood easier for consumers to understand and more familiar to them.

The second project is the "Ocean and Textbooks Project." Currently, there are not enough opportunities in Japanese school education to learn basic knowledge about the ocean, which is the foundation of the fishing industry. Therefore, in this project, we visited the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and other organizations to appeal for the inclusion of an ocean education curriculum in the curriculum guidelines. Although it is not easy to officially add it to the curriculum guidelines, we are currently holding discussions from the perspective of "what can be done in the classroom."

The third project is the "Resource Management Case Studies Project." Resource management is extremely important for making Japan's fishing industry sustainable. While voluntary resource management is required, particularly in coastal fisheries, many people are unsure how to actually implement it and are worried. Therefore, we are investigating successful voluntary resource management cases from all over Japan and analyzing commonalities.

As a result, we found that what's important isn't the resource management method itself, but the "health of the community" that makes it possible to carry it out. What's important is whether all members agree with the need for resource management and whether there is an environment in which it can be continued for the long term. We are currently continuing our research to find out how such an environment is created.

--The "Project to Deliver Voices from the Field to the Government" also made policy recommendations for 2025. What were those recommendations?

The government has made two policy recommendations so far. The first was in February 2025, when the Liberal Democratic Party's Fisheries Research Council called for an expansion of the research budget to identify the causes of declines and abnormalities in fisheries resources. This was discussed through the committee and the LDP Fisheries Division, andThis was also reflected in the government's official stance in the Basic Policy of June 2025.

The second time was in September 2025, when I visited then-Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Shinjiro Koizumi and Director-General of the Fisheries Agency Hitoshi Fujita, and directly appealed for the need to strengthen research on coastal fish species in addition to offshore fish species. I also recommended the need to increase cooperation on science-based resource conservation measures by resolving the shortage of researchers and increasing dialogue with fishermen.

At EXPO 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo, a food truck was set up where customers could actually eat sustainable seafood.

The motto is to walk the talk. Reporting sessions also help maintain motivation.

-- Many of the projects that emerged from the Fisheries Future Summit have taken shape and are producing results. What efforts are you making to move from discussion to actual action and to continue this?

Each project is initiated by someone who wants to do something after the two-day Fisheries Future Summit, and they recruit supporters to turn it into a project. Motivation is high at the start due to the excitement of the summit, but that motivation tends to wane as time goes by. Therefore, we hold monthly online reporting meetings every month, and a real interim reporting meeting in Tokyo between summits to check on each other's progress.

My motto is "walk the talk." I decide later whether I can do it or not, but first I declare my intention. If I do that, I naturally have no choice but to do it.

The Fisheries Future Summit has been held twice now, with numerous projects being launched and producing results.Second partThe event is scheduled to be held in Noto in March 2026.Part3While asking about this, he will also talk about the future of the fishing industry in Japan and around the world.

Interviewed and written by: Shino Kawasaki

After planning and editing corporate advertisements at a design office, she became a freelance writer, copywriter, and food coordinator in 2016. She writes for a variety of media, including women's magazines published by major publishers, food and beverage magazines and websites, and medical information websites.