Winter Sea Changed Okayama's Beaches - Memories of Farmed Nori and Climate Change: Late 1990s to Mid-2000s

Winter Sea Changed Okayama's Beaches - Memories of Farmed Nori and Climate Change: Late 1990s to Mid-2000s
The Seto Inland Sea has long provided an ideal environment for cultivated nori because the waves are calm, the influence from the open sea is minimal, and the water temperature drops sufficiently in winter. It is in the cold winter waters that nori grows to its bright black color and high quality, both in flavor and nutritional value. For this reason, nori from the Okayama coast has long enjoyed a high reputation in markets throughout Japan. However, from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, an anomaly became noticeable: the water temperature did not drop even in winter.

During this period, the nori did not fully develop color, and poor growth and color fading occurred one after another. Fishermen on the beaches lamented that the cold winters of the past had not returned, and suffered declining market prices due to lower harvest volume and quality, as well as increased costs due to additional fertilizer inputs. The causes are said to have been a combination of the long-term trend of global warming, as well as the El Niño phenomenon and fluctuations in the Kuroshio Current and Tsushima Warm Current. Looking back at the historical background, the Kyoto Protocol adopted at the 1997 Kyoto Conference for the Prevention of Global Warming came into effect in 2005, and the reduction of greenhouse gases became an international issue. While interest in environmental issues was growing in Japan and efforts were being made in industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of global warming were becoming more and more familiar in fishing and fa
rming villages in the countryside. The slump in Okayama's nori-agriculture industry was an opportunity to raise awareness that climate change is not an abstract, distant problem, but a real event that threatens traditional livelihoods.