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  Channel NewsAsia 18 Jun 07
Japan plants coral to save sinking 'territory'

BBC 15 Jun 07
Japan uses coral to 'grow' islets
By Chris Hogg

Straits Times 16 Jun 07
Japan grows coral to boost claims to islets

TOKYO - JAPANESE fisheries officials have launched a coral-growing project around two Pacific Ocean islets to bolster a reef and Tokyo's claims in a territorial dispute with China. Japan says that Okinotorishima - two uninhabited rocky outcroppings about 1,700km south-west of Tokyo - are islands.

China does not dispute Japan's territorial claim over the islets, but calls them mere rocks that do not qualify as a starting point of economic waters, as Japan claims under international law.

Fisheries officials travelled to the islets last month with six colonies of baby coral they successfully grew, agency official Kenji Miyaji said.

The officials are planning another trip later this month to plant nine more colonies around the islets. They are expected to grow larger, helping build up the islets over years.

Marine biologists are growing the coral at the agency's laboratory on the southern island of Okinawa and hope to eventually plant 'tens of thousands' of colonies around the islets, he said.

The coral project is aimed at maintaining and building the islets - and at accommodating economic activity to make sure they keep their island status under the United Nations maritime convention, Mr Miyaji said.

The idea to grow coral around the islets is new, and scant background research has been conducted.

'But corals can attract many fish, and they can prevent shore erosion,' he said.

Japan has used cement embankments to fortify the islets against encroaching waves, and uses the islets to delineate its exclusive economic zone so that it can lay exclusive claim to the natural resources 200 nautical miles from its shores into the Pacific Ocean. ASSOCIATED PRESS

BBC 15 Jun 07
Japan uses coral to 'grow' islets
By Chris Hogg BBC News, Tokyo

Japan has launched an innovative project to try to protect an exclusive economic zone off its coast. Officials are planting coral to increase the land mass of rocky outcrops in Japan's waters.

Six colonies of coral have been planted around Okinotorishima, some 1,700km (1,060 miles) south of Tokyo.

China recognises the outcrop as Japan's territory, but says Tokyo cannot claim rights to the surrounding waters as it does not qualify as an island. Important rocks They look like two concrete roundabouts, sitting in the middle of the sea off the southern coast of Japan. Their combined land mass is just 10 sq m (12 square yards).

But these rocky outcrops are important. According to the Law of the Sea, Japan can lay exclusive claim to the natural resources 370km (230 miles) from its shores. So, if these outcrops are Japanese islands, the exclusive economic zone stretches far further from the coast of the main islands of Japan then it would do otherwise.

To bolster Tokyo's claim, officials have posted a large metal address plaque on one of them making clear they are Japanese. They have also built a lighthouse nearby.

Rising sea levels

But the problem is that increasing water temperatures are damaging the coral reef that clings to the rocks and provides much of their land mass. Rising sea levels blamed on global warming are also threatening to engulf them. If that happened Japan would lose its rights to the natural resources around them.

So officials are now returning coral samples that were taken from the outcrops back to the mainland a few months ago and cultivated in laboratories. If the experiment is successful they say they will be able to plant tens of thousands of colonies of coral, thereby making the islets bigger.

China, though, says these are just rocks, not islands. It argues that they should not be the basis for economic claims, no matter how large they are or how much coral is planted on them.

Channel NewsAsia 18 Jun 07
Japan plants coral to save sinking 'territory'

TOKYO: Japan has begun planting baby coral on a remote Pacific atoll in a multi-million-dollar project to save sinking islets and defend a territorial claim disputed with China, officials said on Monday.

Japan regards the rocky isles of Okinotori, 1,700 kilometres (1,060 miles) south of Tokyo, as the southernmost point of its territory, letting it set its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone around them.

Teams will take several plants of juvenile coral to the uninhabited isles this month after implanting six others in May, said fisheries expert Noboru Ishioka.

"We will watch the results ... though it is difficult to look frequently as a voyage takes three-and-a-half days," said Ishioka, chief researcher at Fisheries Infrastructure Development Centre. "We hope to plant tens of thousands of them from this year on," he said.

His public corporation was partially tasked with the coral-growing project by the government's Fisheries Agency. Japan has put aside some 500 million yen (four million dollars) for the project over the two years to March 2008, according to the Fisheries Agency.

The project was launched to "grow coral and protect national land", said an agency official who declined to be named.

But another official, Akito Sato, who is in charge of the project at the agency, said Japan "cannot rule out the possibility that rising water would cover the islands", due to global warming.

"We can use coral as a means to ward off the submergence," he said, adding another reason was to protect the environment on the atoll.

Also known as Douglas Reef, the atoll, about 11 kilometres (seven miles) in circumference, has been extensively eroded by waves. Only several square metres on the tops of the two rocks, which are reinforced by concrete, remain above surface at high tide.

China has insisted Okinotori is just rocks and thus is not regarded under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as an entity around which Japan can set its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. - AFP/so
links

Fisheries Agency to try new method to restore ailing coral at southern isle
Japan Times 14 May 06

Japanese experts develop breakthrough method to help restore precious coral reefs Channel NewsAsia 9 Feb 06

Related articles on Global issues: marine issues
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