Japan, China and the seven other members of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission have agreed to cut their combined saury catch quota by about 25% from last year to 250,000 tons a year to address depleted stocks.
The new catch limit, which was decided at the end of a three-day meeting through Friday in Sapporo, will be in place for two years. While the parties agreed on a 40% cut from the previous year in 2021 and kept the quota at 333,750 tons in 2022, Tokyo had proposed halving it to 170,000 tons amid historically poor catches.
Even after the latest change, the quota still far exceeds the actual amount of saury caught by commission members Japan, Canada, China, the European Union, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and Vanuatu.