Abstract
On March 11, 2011, about 400 fishing boats stood out to waters off Iwate Prefecture, and some crews fell victims to tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. In Taro District, Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture which is a tsunami-prone zone, many fishermen are engaged in aquaculture using small boats with outboard motors which outnumber those in the whole country. We took up Taro-cho Fisheries Cooperative Association as a model of case study, and executed research and analysis on conditions of sea areas of refuge designated by the Fisheries Agency according to the Guidelines for Development of Fishing Areas Resilient to Disasters and fishing boats which took refuge at the time of the Earthquake. In the Guidelines, one of requirements of the sea area of refuge is sufficient depth of water enabling the tsunami flow rate to be lower than one fifth of fishing boats' average speed. However, the result of our study shows the possibility that a sea area which does not meet the requirement can be used as a sea area of refuge. It is also shown that placing a revolving light and a wireless speaker for disaster prevention on the cape head is effective to provide emergency information on tsunami promptly and precisely with crews of a small boat with an outboard motor operating in a coastal aquaculture area, because they enable crews to visually recognize or catch such information even at night.
