In November, following the compulsory closed season for sakura shrimp from June to October, 108 shrimp trawlers based in Donggang, Pingtung County, begin to get busy. Arriving at the auction venue for sakura shrimp at Donggang Yanpu Fishing Harbor, we can see the freshly caught shrimp landed by fishermen that day. When the afternoon auction is over, refrigerated trucks carry the shrimp to processing plants.

Scene-stealing supporting actor

We visit Just Champion Enterprise Company, located in Pingtung’s Nanzhou Township, where the production lines are working overtime to deal with the opening of the sakura shrimp season, racing against time to preserve their product’s freshness.

“The most important thing with sakura shrimp that will be consumed raw is to control the freshness,” says Yang Yun-yu, general manager at Just Champion, which exports over 90% of its sakura shrimp products to Japan. What matters most at auction is to select lots that include few shrimp of other species and are sufficiently fresh. After arriving at the processing plant, the shrimp are inspected and small fish and shrimp of other species are picked out by hand. Then they are washed three times in water of the same salinity as seawater, and flash frozen. The result is “sashimi grade” sakura shrimp, which can be directly dipped in soy sauce or wasabi and eaten raw.

Yeh Chiung-yu, a manager at Just Champion, says that with sashimi-grade sakura shrimp one can taste the sweetness of the meat. Also, like other fresh shrimp, it can be used to make gunkan-maki (a type of Japanese ­sushi).­

Meanwhile, “prepared food grade” sakura shrimp that has been boiled in salt water is also exported to Japan and is sold through restaurants and supermarkets. Restaurants use it to make sakura shrimp and vegetable pancakes, tamagoyaki (Japanese omelet), or donburimeshi (served in bowls of rice), as well as add it to udon noodles or sukiyaki (Japanese hotpot). Since sakura means “cherry blossom” in Japanese, it is only natural that dishes made with sakura shrimp are the most apt foods to appear on menus when the cherry blossom season arrives in March.

In Taiwan, sakura shrimp are mostly used dried as an ingredient in various dishes. It takes four kilograms of fresh shrimp to make one kilo of dried shrimp, but dried shrimp has an even richer aroma and can be used in many ways: You can toss a handful into fried rice, mix it into steamed or scrambled eggs, put it into radish cake, or serve it with youfan (fried glutinous rice) at banquets, while Western-style restaurants use it to garnish pasta or shaved ice, or to make a snack mix with almonds.

Although this shrimp plays only a supporting or decorative role in cuisine and is small in size with little meat, dried sakura shrimp costs about NT$3,000 per kilo. The main reason for the high price is the scarcity of this shrimp: It is only caught in large numbers in the seas off Taiwan and in Suruga Bay in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture.
 

Authentication of pedigree

As early as the 1950s, fishermen operating out of Dong­gang in Taiwan often caught sakura shrimp while fishing with bottom trawl nets. But they didn’t recognize its potential value, and sold it cheaply as feed for shrimp and crabs.

It was only in 1982, when a Japanese trading company began purchasing sakura shrimp at over NT$300 per crate, that the commercial value of this seafood became apparent. At that time fishermen in Donggang began developing trawlers specially designed for catching sakura shrimp.

In 1988 Makoto Omori, the Japanese scholar revered as “the father of sakura shrimp,” confirmed that the sakura shrimp in the waters off Taiwan are the same species as those found off Japan. With their pedigree thus authenticated, Taiwan’s sakura shrimp became an even hotter commodity for export to Japan.

Wang Chih-min, director of the Promotion Department at the Donggang District Fishermen’s Association (DDFA), explains the origin of the name “sakura shrimp.” According to a legend from Japan’s Edo Period (1603–1867), a fishermen got drunk and fell asleep in his boat; on waking in the middle of the night under a bright moon, he saw glittering shrimp swimming about in the sea looking like sparkling cherry blossoms, which is how they got their lovely moniker.

Pingtung’s sakura shrimp fishing grounds are found in the waters between the mouth of the Gaoping River and Xiaoliuqiu Island, and off Fangshan Township, with the Gaoping Submarine Canyon and the Fangliao Submarine Canyon being the most productive areas. Weng Jinn-shing, director of the Coastal and Offshore Fishery Research Center at the Fisheries Research Institute, which conducts annual resource surveys and monitoring of sakura shrimp, offers the following assessment: Because these two submarine canyons are fed by water from various waterways such as the Houliao and Donggang rivers, the canyons are rich in nutrients, providing an ideal feeding environment for sakura shrimp, which can tolerate a wide range of water temperatures. There are similar conditions in Suruga Bay and the surrounding waters off Shizuoka in Japan.

From crisis to opportunity

Taiwan has seen continual prosperity in the sakura shrimp fishery for many years now. According to the Fisheries Agency, since the start of large-scale harvesting of this shrimp, the annual catch has stayed in the range between 800 and 1,200 metric tons. Effort has been devoted to preventing overfishing, and prices have ­remained good. The credit goes mainly to the foresight shown by DDFA secretary-general Zheng Fushan and fisherman Lin Jianglong in setting up the Donggang Sakura Shrimp Production and Marketing Group.

Back in the 1990s, when coastal and inshore fishing resources were in decline even as fishing technology and techniques were improving and Taiwan’s fishing industry was developing in the direction of distant-­water fishing, families that had lived by trawl fishing for three generations, but had long seen the prices of their catch controlled by middlemen, were giving up fishing as a profession. Fortunately, the sakura shrimp came to their rescue.
 

Restricting catches to control prices

This year (2023), the average auction price in Donggang for a 15-kilo crate of sakura shrimp is NT$7,000, more than ten times the price in 1994 of NT$600. The credit for this goes to the DDFA’s success in using the catch volume to control prices, achieving the dual goals of conserving resources and ensuring economic profits.

Wang Chih-min offers the following analysis: First, the DDFA, acting on the basis of the Fisheries Act, compelled sakura shrimp fishermen to join the production and marketing group (termed a ”fishery production cooperative” in the legislation) to be able to receive a license to work the area’s sakura shrimp fishing grounds. In this way they have controlled the number of fishing vessels.

Second, fishermen may only catch sakura shrimp from November to May, and must take two days off per week during this open season. At the same time, based on the number of fishing vessels and available shrimp resources, limits are placed on each vessel’s daily catch; this year the limit is 12 crates, or 180 kilos.

Moreover, fishermen work proactively to preserve sakura shrimp resources. Sakura shrimp have a high reproductive capacity, with one shrimp able produce 1,800 eggs in ten days. But if half of the catch on a given day have “green heads” (dark green markings on their heads), this indicates that they are releasing their eggs, and at such times all the fishing vessels suspend operations for one week in order to allow the fishing grounds to recover and let the shrimp spawn in peace.

No need to work so hard

Sakura shrimp engage in “diurnal vertical migration”: Every day they move up and down in the water column, sinking to depths of 100–200 meters at dawn and rising nearer to the surface after sunset. This latter period is when they are most densely concentrated.

In the past the optimal time for catching sakura shrimp was considered to be to leave port at midnight and reach the fishing grounds at 1 or 2 a.m. However, once nets were fitted with detectors to accurately measure the depth at which the shrimp gather, it became possible to make one’s daily quota in one fell swoop. The DDFA now requires fishermen to put to sea no earlier than 4 a.m., as Wang Chih-min explains: “We do this in order to deliberately miss the period when the shrimp are most densely concentrated, so that this resource is not exhausted.”

The success of this “Donggang model” has not only attracted Japanese fishermen to come and learn from its example, but when Makoto Omori visited Donggang six years ago, he said frankly that Taiwan was managing sakura shrimp better than Japan.
 

Moving towards blue seafood

In 1996 the Fisheries Research Institute discovered colonies of sakura shrimp in the seas around Guishan Island (Turtle Island) and in 2004 they began giving fishermen guidance on how to catch them.

In 2014, after studying the Donggang model, the Toucheng District Sakura Shrimp Production and Marketing Group was founded. Sakura shrimp fishing is limited to the period from February to August each year, and is also suspended from June 1 to July 14.

Nevertheless, in recent years there has been a decline in the quantities of sakura shrimp caught off both Guishan Island and Donggang. Weng Jinn-shing of the Coastal and Offshore Fishery Research Center takes the view that in the future Taiwan should move towards limiting the total catch in Donggang to 1,000 metric tons per year.

Despite this decline, the DDFA is still optimistic about the future of the sakura shrimp fishery. Wang Chih-min says that the goals for the future are to develop a tourist processing factory for sakura shrimp, to apply for a “blue label” for sustainable fisheries products from the Marine Stewardship Council, and to promote sakura shrimp internationally. After all, these shrimp constitute a precious marine resource that heaven has bestowed on Taiwan, and we should treasure them.

For more pictures, please click 《Small Is Bountiful: The Sakura Shrimp》