On one early morning, fisherman Shunsuke Akama gently pulled seaweed using a 5-meter stick onto his boat off the Sanriku coast, which was ravaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami five years ago.
"The stem is soft. It's a good harvest," Akama, 32, said, touching the sargassum, a type of seaweed popularly consumed as health food.
Akama is not only a fisherman but a founding member of Fisherman Japan, which aims to improve industry cooperation in the disaster-hit region, traditionally one of Japan's top seafood-producing areas.