Tuesday marked Nori Day in Japan, an annual event when farmers of "nori," or seaweed, stage various activities aimed at expanding its consumption.

Schoolchildren bite into "nori" from the Ariake Sea to celebrate Nori Day during lunch.

This year, however, a poor Ariake Sea crop is casting a pall over the industry.

Nori shipments for the first 10 months of fiscal 2000 totaled about 3.8 billion sheets measuring 21 cm by 19 cm, according to the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations.

This represented a sharp drop of about 1.2 billion sheets, or 25 percent, from fiscal 1999, the federation said.

Of the decline, Ariake Sea nori accounted for some 1.1 billion sheets. Crops of other major nori-producing areas, including Hyogo and Kagawa prefectures, were almost the same as fiscal 1999 levels.

Nori is a common seasoning in Japanese cuisine and is used as a sushi wrapper.

Ariake Sea nori is one of the more well-known varieties, accounting for roughly 40 percent of Japan's seaweed production.

The Ariake Sea is surrounded by the prefectures of Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Saga and Fukuoka.

The Isahaya Bay land reclamation project in Nagasaki Prefecture is blamed by critics for this season's poor nori crop in the nearly landlocked Ariake Sea. The project is believed to be reducing the volume of fresh seawater flowing in from the East China Sea.

Increases in nori bidding prices resulting from the poor Ariake Sea crop are taking a toll on those who process and distribute nori products.

Kosaku Kitabata, president of a nori processing company in the city of Wakayama, said the poor Ariake Sea crop is not only a problem for the region but also for the seaweed industry as a whole.

"What we were able to purchase was that produced by the end of December," Kitabata said.

"Purchase prices were 3 yen to 5 yen higher per sheet, but we cannot easily raise the price of our products," he said.

A survey conducted by the federation between Nov. 1 and the end of January at 25 locations in Japan showed the national average of the bid price of nori was 12.87 yen per sheet, up 1.40 yen from a year before.

In Wakayama Prefecture, the bid price came to 9.45 yen, up from 5.84 yen, or 61.8 percent, it said.

Yoshiaki Kobayashi, who runs the biggest nori wholesaler in eastern Japan, said, "We have never seen such a sharp decrease in nori supply.

"We cannot survive if we are unable to pass on the surge in purchase prices to sales prices," he said.

The government set Feb. 6 as Nori Day in 1966 to mark the day in the year 701 when authorities established the Taiho Ritsuryo, a legal code in which nori was designated one of the tributes to the emperor.