By RICHARD LLOYD PARRY Herald correspondent
TOKYO - Not many countries celebrate National Seaweed Day, but there are not many that honour and esteem the marine vegetable in so heartfelt a way as Japan.
Seaweed Day was on Tuesday, marking the date - in the year 710 - that edible seaweed first appeared on a list of treasured produce offered in tribute to the Emperor.
Thirteen centuries later, few Japanese go a day without eating it in some form or other - floating in miso soup at breakfast, chopped into strands as a garnish for lunchtime noodles, and above all as the dried and crinkly wrapping for sushi rolls.
The sensation of the crisp, salty seaweed against the bland rice and moist fish is one of the world's most delicious taste experiences. What would Japanese food be without it?
Seaweed Day generally passes without much fuss but this year was a much more serious affair. Protests have taken place and questions are being planned in Parliament.
For the nori industry is in crisis.
The problem originates in Japan's Ariake Sea, a large shallow bay created by the elaborate convoluted coastline of Japan's southern island, Kyushu, where two-fifths of all Japanese nori production originates. Ariake nori is the best in the world, with the finest taste and the richest colour, a deep matt black-green.
But this winter, the harvesters of Ariake Bay made an alarming discovery. The nori they raised from the bottom was beige, instead of green, virtually tasteless and extremely sparse.
Nationally, this year's seaweed harvest has dropped by a total of 25 per cent or 1.2 billion sheets.
Ninety per cent of the shortfall is accounted for by the Ariake Sea crisis.
And there is not much mystery about the cause of the seaweed failure - environmentalists have been predicting something like this for years.
In the west of the Ariake Sea is Isahaya Bay, site of one of the most controversial of Japan's many public works project.
Four years ago, 300 steel gates were lowered across the mouth of the bay as part of a long-term project to reclaim it for farmland.
The plan was bitterly opposed on the grounds that sealing off such a large area of living ocean would permanently alter the ecology of the whole Ariake Sea.
The seaweed cultivators blame their ruin on the reclamation and the bureaucrats behind it.
Last month, a flotilla of 6000 angry seaweed farmers in 1000 boats rallied in protest at the project.
"Open the dikes!" they shouted and, less catchily, "Conduct an environment assessment survey!" Nobody knows exactly what is ravaging the nori, but theories include malnutrition because of a sudden and stifling excess of plankton, the phenomenon known as the "red tide."
The ministry insists there is no scientific evidence of a link between the nori devastation and their land reclamation project - which is true only because they have not allowed any scientific research to be undertaken.
As for the long-term, nobody knows. But the time may yet come when National Seaweed Day is not a time of rejoicing, but of sad and distant memories.
Seaweed crisis rocks nation
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