As already stated by a Japanese law specialist in 1997 in the case
of the Seto Inland Sea (Nakayama, 1997), “with the issue of environmental
protection becoming increasingly important to fisheries
today, it is now necessary to aggressively position environmental
protection laws within the legal system concerned with fisheries”
and further, “because the protection of marine resources is an
integral part of overall environmental conservation, and because it
is a particularly vital issue for fisheries, fishery operators must be
cast as major players in the environmental conservation struggle”.
In other words, fishermen must realize that they are the main
components in the marine resources use system, and that they
therefore must actively participate in ecosystem-based fishery
based on mutual agreements through existing or to-be-created
governance forms and procedures.