From an aspiring teacher, he became a fisherman.

Mr. Ogasawara grew up watching his father, a fisherman, and his mother, who helped him. When he was a child, he would wake up in the morning to find food and a change of clothes on the floor, and his parents were already at work and were nowhere to be found.... There were times when he felt lonely, but "I watched my father working as a fisherman up close, and I felt that I could count on him," he says.

Mr. Ogasawara's parents

When I was in elementary school, I asked my father what I should do for my summer research project, and he said, 'Let's get a fish print,' so I got a fish print of a huge flatfish he had caught. Only a fisherman's son could have such an experience.

Although Ogasawara knew the hard work of a fisherman and found it interesting at the same time, he did not always want to be a fisherman. A rugby player, Ogasawara continued to play rugby after entering university, and in the future he dreamed of becoming a junior high school teacher.

One day in his senior year of high school, his father injured his leg while fishing and was told it might be amputated. If my father could not go fishing, someone else would have to feed the family. It was time for me to decide on a career path, so I decided to stop going to college and become a fisherman."

Mr. Ogasawara, who has just become a fisherman

In life, you never know when something will happen. After graduating from high school, Mr. Ogasawara took a six-month training course at the Hokkaido Fisheries Training Institute in Shikabe Town, where he obtained licenses for boats, forklifts, and radios. He eventually recovered from his injuries and began his career as a fisherman as a crew member on his father's boat.

Above: Sea cucumber fishing, below: Herring fishing

In his second year as a fisherman, he began "barrel sink fishing" for sea cucumbers.

In his second year, he obtained fishing rights and began barrel fishing for Pacific octopus. Barrel fishing is, so to speak, fishing for a single octopus. A barrel is attached to one end of a rope, and a spearfish is attached to the other end. The barrel is thrown into the ocean and left to float, and the octopus, mistaking it for an enemy, attacks the barrel and is caught by the hook. The barrel, which had been drifting with the tide, suddenly stops moving, and the fisherman, sensing that the octopus has been caught, coils a rope and pulls the octopus back to the boat with a thud.

Barrel fishing. The sight of the octopus being pulled up is dynamic.

In Tomamae, many fishermen use small boats and cannot go very far offshore, so barrel sinking is done from spring to summer, when the octopus come closer to the shore. During the rest of the year, octopus box fishing, in which boxes are left submerged in the sea to take advantage of the octopus' habit of crawling into tight spaces, is the mainstream fishing method.

Barrel fishing is a very deep type of fishing. The current of a river flows from upstream to downstream, but the tides of the ocean are invisible, and in an hour the current can reverse or slow down. It also changes depending on the weather and other factors, and the length of the rope needs to be adjusted by calculating the depth of the water and the speed of the tide. It is no exaggeration to say that experience and good sense are required.

A mizudako octopus pulled up with isari

How long will we be able to fish?

Eventually, Mr. Ogasawara became aware of a problem. That is, "How long can we continue the fishing industry, which is the core industry of Tomamae? He wondered how long the fishing industry, Tomamae's core industry, could continue. If overfishing is allowed to continue, the mizudako will eventually disappear. I strongly felt that Tomamae's fishery must be made sustainable.

There was a catalyst for this thought. While working as a fisherman, Mr. Ogasawara has been involved in town development with his seniors since around 2012. The main activities involve camping with local children and having them experience agriculture and fishing to learn about the good things about Tomamae.

With Mr. Nishi Taishi (left), a senior whom I respect and admire, who is working together with me on the town development project.

Many of the children leave the town after graduating from high school. I feel a little sad when I imagine them telling their university friends and colleagues that there is nothing in Tomamae. If they could learn about and experience the local primary industry, they might be proud of their hometown when they go out.

A scene from a town development project. Mr. Ogasawara is third from the right.

To achieve this, I want to make the primary industry sustainable, starting with the fishing industry, which is my home. With this in mind, we launched the "Fisheries Improvement Project" in 2019. This is also called "FIP" for short for "Fisheries (Aquaculture) Improvement Project" and is a project to improve the sustainability of the fishing industry to a level where certification can be obtained. There are only a few examples of this project in Japan, and Mr. Ogasawara is the first in Hokkaido.

Convincing fellow fishermen was more difficult than expected.

What exactly did you start with?

We started by collecting data from the fishermen who were engaged in barrel fishing. We would hear comments such as, 'There were more octopus this year,' or 'There were fewer octopus this year,' and if the number of octopus was decreasing, we would cut back on the catch. We tried to set such rules in advance so that we could invoke them at any time.

It is much easier to increase the number of octopus to two while there are still one, than to return it to one after it has reached zero. Moreover, it is meaningful because it is done by everyone, not just one person. Mr. Ogasawara tried to take action before the resources ran out, but it was still difficult to get the project off the ground.

First, we held a meeting to explain the purpose of this project and ask for cooperation," he says. But at first, everyone responded, 'What are you talking about? I explained that my explanation was still not clear enough. I think it was partly because my explanation was not very clear, but there were people who were too busy to show up even after several meetings, and it was difficult to get off to a good start.

The first meeting was held in 2017. Over the next two years, Mr. Ogasawara continued to persuade his fellow fishermen. He visited the homes of those who could not attend the meetings and explained in detail, "I want to make sure that everyone will be able to eat for as long as possible, and I will do the difficult things. I will take care of the difficult things, and I will not cause you any trouble if at all possible.

Eventually, more and more people understood, and the project gradually moved forward. Mr. Ogasawara himself was not sure what would happen before the project started, but he decided that it was important to just get moving.

He has been working with all the people involved in the fishery, both those who catch the fish and those who buy them.

At the same time, there is another project underway.

We are planning to commercialize boiled octopus and sell it in June. It is easy to understand that we are trying to create a sixth industry for fishermen, but that alone is not interesting, so we are considering various ways to create a system.

For example, if we catch one ton of mizu-dako, we will catch about 100 octopuses, each weighing 10 kg. 100 octopuses will be processed into 10 products: 8 legs + 2 split heads = 10 products. In other words, from 100 octopuses, 1,000 products are produced.

When consumers buy these products directly from private e-commerce sites, there is no intermediary margin, which doubles the profit compared to the normal wholesale process. In other words, even if I land only 500 kilograms instead of the usual one ton, I still earn one ton, which means I can eat. And if another fisherman catches the 500 kilograms of octopus I didn't catch and returns it to the sea, that will be his income.

In addition, if we release octopuses weighing less than 10 kilograms each, the octopuses will grow to a large size and will also be able to reproduce. The name of the product is "ReTAKO," which is "TAKO" with a "Re. The name "ReTAKO" is a reference to our wish that the octopus fishery will remain sustainable for another 100 years.

ReTAKO's package was selected from the public in a package design contest sponsored by the Hokkaido Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry. It won the METI Director-General's Award!

The package design was selected from a public contest sponsored by the Hokkaido Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry. We will continue to communicate about the Mizudako octopus fishery and its commercialization on social networking sites. We want our customers to see this, and by connecting with us, we want them to become a relevant part of the fishing industry.

ReTAKO operates under the trade name "inakaBLUE. ReTAKO is operating under the name "inakaBLUE" and will continue to expand its activities under the motto of "preserving the sea where octopus will still be caught 100 years from now and connecting the fishing community in Inaka Town to the future.

Some things are born from contact with different industries.

The Fishery Improvement Project began with an encounter with Mr. Shunji Murakami, who provides consulting services related to marine products. One of Mr. Ogasawara's senior fishermen asked Mr. Murakami, "I would like to hear an interesting fisherman's story. and the connection was made. Mr. Murakami shared Mr. Ogasawara's passion for the fishing industry in Tomamae and told him about an initiative called the Fishery Improvement Project (FIP).

As a fisherman, I don't get out of town very often, and I don't have many opportunities to connect with people in other industries, but I think it will become quite important for people living in a small community to see the outside world in the future. I hope to continue communicating with all sorts of people."

Although there have been many hardships up to this point, there are now more than a few fishermen who are curious about the current status of the project and come to ask about its progress, he says. Some even tell people outside the fishing industry, "Koichi is working on something like this right now. Recently, fishermen from other areas have come to hear him speak, and university students have made his work the subject of their graduation theses.

I can't measure my range by myself, so there must be more I can do," he says. First of all, I want to get 'ReTAKO' off the ground and find new things I can do to further advance it.

In a small town, if you don't do anything, you can only watch the natural decline of the population with sadness. That is why we have a sense of crisis, but at the same time we want to set up something exciting," says Ogasawara. The young fishermen's efforts have only just begun.