Sea urchins return to Sea of Japan coastal waters

FUKUI, Japan - A diver is all smiles with a bagful of sea urchins she gathered after three hours of work on Aug. 6, the last day of the urchin-gathering season off the coast of Fukui Prefecture. Fishermen in the area say the volume of sea urchins caught off the Fukui coast have more or less returned to normal 10 years after the Russian oil tanker Nakhodka carrying 20,000 kiloliters of fuel oil broke up in stormy weather in the Sea of Japan and up to 6,200 kiloliters of oil washed up in the coasts of 10 prefectures. At one point, the volume of sea urchins gathered by a local fishermen's cooperative in Fukui dropped to 19 kilograms, compared with an annual average of 300 kg before the spill, fishermen say.

• Product Code
• ILEA001216780

• Registered date
• 2007/8/06 00:00:00

• Credit
• Kyodo / Kyodo News Images

• Media source
• 2007 Kyodo News

• Media size
• 1864 × 1228 pixel

• Resolution
• dpi

• Deployment size
• 559.03(KB)*

• Special instruction

*File size when opened in Photoshop, etc.