The Shinei Maru No. 66 looks like the dozens of other fishing boats moored in this Japanese harbor. But its builders say it is the world’s first hybrid fishing trawler. By switching between oil and electric-powered propulsion, it uses up to a third less fuel than conventional boats.
“It’s like a Prius for the sea,” said Tadatoshi Ikeuchi, 62, the boat’s owner and captain.
Commercial fishermen around the world have been laboring under the weight of high fuel prices. In Europe, they have expressed their frustration by blockading ports to protest the prices and taxes on fuel.
In the US, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has called for low-interest loans to help Alaskan fishermen buy fuel-efficient engines.
Japan is searching for high-tech solutions to the cost of fuel. In fact, the hybrid boat engine, which is still just a prototype, is part of a multimillion-dollar government-led effort to rescue Japan’s fishing industry from high energy prices.
Fuel costs have risen 40 percent in Japan this year, to about US$1 a liter. As part of the two-year-old program, the Japanese are also testing biofuel-powered marine engines, computer-engineered propeller designs and low-energy LED lights on squid boats, which use bright lights to lure their catch.
There is a vast international market for such solutions. Many Japanese boat engines that use computers to raise fuel efficiency are already popular among American fishermen. And Yamanaka, the Tokyo-based maker of the hybrid engine for the trawler, which is called the Fish Eco, says the US and Europe are large potential markets.
Japan’s agriculture and fisheries ministry, which is leading the aid project, says it will help pay for research, but most of the costs are being borne by the private sector, mainly fishermen’s groups and private companies.
Modernization of this most ancient of enterprises seems the natural answer here to the commercial fishing crisis, which predates the run-up (and recent stabilization) in fuel prices.
Japan gave the world both sushi and the hybrid car. But fishermen say they doubt the effort will be enough to break the deep sense of malaise that has started to afflict fishing communities like Otoshibe in northern Japan.
After decades of sending its fleets to the far corners of the globe, and paying top yen for tuna and other premium fish for sashimi in global markets, Japan’s fishing industry appears to many to be in irreversible decline.
The number of commercial fishermen has shrunk by 27 percent in the last decade, to 204,330 last year, hurt by declining birthrates and migration of young people to the cities, said the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, an industry group representing fishermen.
The federation warns that rising fuel costs could force an additional 25,000 to 45,000 fishermen to hang up their nets. Boat fuel, known as heavy oil, now accounts for about 20 percent to 30 percent of a fisherman’s total costs in Japan, almost double its proportion three years ago.
Japan’s fishermen say the cost of fuel, which has tripled in the last three years, puts them in a particular bind. They cannot pass the increase on to consumers in the form of higher seafood prices for fear of losing sales to cheaper imports from Asian competitors such as China and Vietnam.
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