The March 11 tsunami rendered around 90 percent of the 29,000 fishing boats in the three most severely hit prefectures unusable, according to provisional tallies by the three prefectures.
Reviving the fishing industries in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures is indispensable to rebuilding local economies, so the prefectural governments and local fishing cooperatives are mulling a range of steps, including allowing fishermen to operate boats or breed fish and other marine products collectively.
Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai has called on the central government to make the areas' fishing industries "state-owned" for a provisional period of about three years and to finance new vessels and port facilities with an eye to selling them to private businesses such as trading houses at a later date.