Commissioner Maria Damanaki (Commissioner for Maritime affairs and fisheries, European Commission)gave a lecture at Nakajima Hall, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, on July 9, 2012. Commissioner Damanaki visited Japan from 9-12 July, 2012. Her schedule include meeting with Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan to discuss the issues of IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fisheries. Lecturing in the University of Tokyo is her first schedule in Japan.

The lecture was titled “the Oceans: Our Common Challenges”. She introduced the most recent global challenges with respect to the management of fisheries and conservation of the living marine resources. In particular, she emphasized that illegally landed fish were estimated to be approximately 20% of the fish sold in the market anywhere in the world. Monitoring of fishing activities, however, contains difficulties in the vast oceans. One option is a market measure which limits distributions of fishery products without a proper catch record. EU has implemented such policy.

Productive interactions were made between Commissioner Damanaki and students of the University of Tokyo, and participants share various common experiences and future challenges in the area of fishery management and ocean environments.

(Contacts)
Nobuyuki YAGI, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences
The University of Tokyo
1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, JAPAN
(Tel/Fax) +81-3-5841-5599