Japan, China and six other economies of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission agreed for the first time Thursday to set annual catch quotas for saury, aimed at addressing fishery resource depletion.

The saury catch limit proposed by Tokyo was set at 556,250 tons for 2020 among the eight participating economies, after two previous attempts to introduce the measure had failed to win support.

During the three-day gathering in Tokyo that ran through Thursday, Japan had initially proposed an annual cap of around 450,000 tons. But a concession was apparently made in order to strike the deal, which had previously been blocked by opposition from China and other countries.