Host: The Association of Japanese Geographers
On this study, I examined the characteristics and problems of community based fisheries management of sakhalin surf clam fishery on Mukawa-cho, Hokkaido. Mukawa-cho places near Tomakomai-city which products sakhalin surf clam of Japanese maximum, and it was one of the central places of production of sakhalin surf clam until the beginning of 1990's. But, after the middle of 1990's, its amount of production decreased rapidly. It can think that there was a change in the resource control of sakhalin surf clam in this background.
At present, there are limitation of the size and a limitation of the amount of picking, and set up of the marine preserve to control resource of sakhalin surf clam in Mukawa area. But it is difficult to cope with market which request better quality shellfish in Mukawa area fully. This is because the quality of the resources declined by large-scale picking.
In this area, shellfish discharge business of the scallop was started in 1989. But it suffered a big blow by the flood damage in 1992, and fishing cooperative carried a large sum of debt. To pay back this debt, large scale picking was done with sakhalin surf clam. As this result, the resources conditions of this area became worse. After that, though some recovery of resources has been appearing by having strengthened resource control, it isn't returned in the condition before large scale picking. It is necessary to cope carefully with resource control.
