China suspended all imports of Japanese fish after the Japanese government permitted the release of more than one million metric tons of treated radioactive waste water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
Chinese seafood imports from Japan have plummeted following Beijing’s ban on marine products from its neighbour in response to the discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Imports fell by 67% in August from the same month a year earlier, to about ¥3bn ($20.2m), the public broadcaster NHK said, citing data from Chinese customs. The decision by Beijing and Hong Kong to suspend all imports of Japanese marine products in late August has sparked a diplomatic row and a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
Maybe, just maybe, they had reason…
Thousands of tons of dead sardines, mackerel wash ashore in northern Japan.
Mystery surrounds the phenomenon of tons of dead fish that were washed up on a beach in northern Japan last week. Sardines and mackerel were washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating an unsettling sliver blanket that covered almost a mile of shoreline.
Marine biologists have concluded that a lack of oxygen in the water may have killed the fish. The first theory is that the fish were being hunted by predators and were herded into the shallow bay by the village of Toi, where the huge numbers of fish quickly consumed all the available oxygen in the water.
An alternative explanation is that the fish encountered a sudden pocket of significantly colder water on their migration route, which weakened them.
It is, indeed, a mystery.
