As the four-year anniversary of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami approaches, a Japanese Fisheries Agency survey revealed that much of the fish processing industry in hard-hit areas are still struggling to recover, The Japan Times reported.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake — the strongest recorded in Japan’s history — struck off the coast, causing a massive tsunami. A recent Fisheries Agency survey found that the pace of reconstruction for seafood companies along that coastline has been slow, in part due to insufficient funds to rebuild but also because of misinformation about the safety of the seafood, according to Japan Times.
The study found fisheries companies in Fukushima — the site of the nuclear power plant meltdown triggered by the tsunami — were producing only 25 percent of what they had before the disaster, the Japan Times reported. Still, other processors in the tsunami’s zone were recovering slightly better, with Miyagi fisheries processors producing 50 percent of their former capacity, Iwate companies producing 53 percent, and Aomori companies producing 90 percent of their pre-disaster fisheries output.
2015 NOLA Media Group