Aspect of the regional structure of fisheries in Japan viewed from the structural ratio of the coastal fisher-boat tiers: A structural analysis of the regional fisheries by the area statistics of the fishery census

In the 48-th Symposium of the Japanese Society of Fisheries Economics, the topic 'the present situation and new movements of the Coastal Fisher-boat Fisheries' was taken up as the main theme among the Coastal Fisheries which will play a central role in fisheries of our nation, from the view point of the importance of the Coastal Fishboat Fisheries. In the symposium, analyses of regional fisheries were reported under some clarification of contention about the Coastal Fisheries, and based on those reports, some future issues were discussed. However, since the regional structures of Coastal Fisher-boat Fisheries has not been analyzed in view of its entirety across the nation, the individual analyses of regional fisheries have taken on the character of case studies. Therefore, in this paper, we first make the position of Coastal Fisher-boat Fisheries clear using the presently available statistics of the fisheries structure, and inquire statistically into the structure of the regional coastal fisheries, which we hope, though a posteriori, makes our deeper understandings of the symposium. As results of our analyses, the followings were made clear. As the ratio of the fishery areas in Japan in which the Coastal Fisher-boat Tiers account for 80% and up reaches more than a half of the all areas, the position of the Coastal Fisher-boat Tiers are very high in the structure of the management units hierarchy. In the progress of the aging, the Coastal Fisher-boat Tiers decrease with the retirement of the aged people, but on the other hand, with the amendment by the shift from the Marine Aquaculture Tiers, relatively improves the standing of itself in the productive structure. For the areas with big changes of the productive structure of regional fisheries, we can find a common fact that the number of the management units are small regardless of the ratio of the Coastal Fisher-boat Tiers. In such areas, the average income of management units is also low, and we can regard that the harshness of fishery conditions make the change of fishery productive structure bigger than the other areas.