Japan to plant coral on disputed islets

Straits Times 9 Apr 08;

Tokyo hopes to cement its right to exploit large expanse of Pacific Ocean
TOKYO - JAPAN is mounting a US$7 million (S$9.7 million) coral transplanting operation in the Pacific aimed at bolstering its side of a territorial dispute with China - and cementing Tokyo's right to exploit a wide expanse of ocean.

Over the next year, scientists will plant more than 50,000 fast-growing Acropora coral fragments on Okinotorishima - two uninhabited rocky outcroppings about 1,700km south-west of Tokyo - project officials say.
The aim is to protect the islets, now circled by concrete seawalls, from further erosion and maintain Japan's claim that they are bona fide islands that can be used to map its exclusive economic zone in the Pacific.

In a sometimes heated dispute, China has challenged Japan's claim, arguing that the outcroppings are too small to be defined as islands under international law, meaning the waters around them are open to use by other nations.

'We hope the corals will grow larger and eventually preserve the islets and their environment,' said Ms Mayumi Tamura, of the Fisheries Agency.

'We see corals as an important marine resource, not as a mere tool of territorial claims.'

The project began in 2006 when officials took 37 coral colonies from the outcroppings and took them to the agency's preserve on Aka Island, near the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, for breeding.

Since then, scientists have grown about 50,000 coral fragments each about the size of a fingertip.

Officials took about a dozen of them to the islets last year as an experiment, and will take another 40,000 over a three-week period starting from April 22.

Ms Tamura said the agency plans to take 10,000 already spawned fragments with tens of thousands more still to be bred in another trip planned for January next year.

The agency has a budget of 770 million yen (S$10.4 million) for the three-year project.

Mr Koji Watanabe, a chief researcher at the government-funded Fisheries Infrastructure Development Centre, said small-scale relocations and transplants of corals has been conducted in Japan, but this would be the first involving so many fragments.

The Fisheries Agency has earmarked 227 million yen for the project for fiscal year 2008, which began on April 1.

It is not the first time Japan has pressed its claim to the islets.

Japan has fortified the islets with cement embankments against the encroaching waves, and uses them to delineate its economic zone so it can lay exclusive claim to the natural resources 200 nautical miles (370km) from its shores into the Pacific.

Japan has built a lighthouse just off the islets. Tokyo's nationalist governor Shintaro Ishihara, whose city has jurisdiction over the outcroppings, made a widely publicised visit there in 2005 to post a large metal address plaque on one of the rocks.

Mr Ishihara has also announced plans to conduct bonito fishing and scientific research in the area.

'So far, we have not heard any complaints (from China),' said Ms Tamura.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said in Beijing yesterday that she had not heard of the project and had no comment.ASSOCIATED PRESS